The Leak: Peter Buxtun, a 28-year-old employee of the Public Health Service, was shocked to learn that his colleagues were withholding proper medical treatment from poor, black syphilis patients so that they could conduct experimental medical treatments on their unwitting patients. Buxtun leaked the story to the Associated Press, which opened with the scandalous line, “For 40 years, the U.S. Public Health Service has conducted a study in which human guinea pigs, not given proper treatment, have died of syphilis and its side effects”
The Outcome: Buxtun testified before Congress, helping to bring the decades-long experiment to an end. In 1999, he attended a ceremony marking the opening of a new bioethics research center at the same university where the infamous experiments were once conducted.