Author will discuss dark secrets hidden in archives

CORNWALL — The moment Susan Reverby laid eyes on the research documents, she knew she had found something hidden in plain sight.“I was floored. This was something no one was looking for,” she told The Lakeville Journal, recalling a visit to the library at the University of Pittsburgh in early 2010.A professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College, and obsessive about finding original documents, Reverby was tying up loose ends for her book, “Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and its Legacy.”She will be in Cornwall Aug. 7 to talk about the book, and her amazing discovery.The book delves into the U.S. Public Health Service’s 40-year study (1932-72) of hundreds of black men in Alabama infected with syphilis. They were deceived about treatment so the effects of the venereal disease could be tracked.What Reverby uncovered in Pittsburgh was a set of research papers from a doctor who used government grant funds for a study in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. There, prisoners and mental hospital patients were infected with syphilis, mostly through contact with prostitutes, and then cured.Reverby took the papers to David Sencer, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga.“He still had enough authority to get the CDC to investigate. It went all the way up the chain of command to the White House, and the entire world press descended on my home.”A full report on the investigation is expected in September. It was the last crusade in defense of public health for Sencer, who died this past May.Reverby has pondered the juxtaposition of the two studies, and the moral implications. The doctor who led the Guatemalan study was not a monster, she said. It was a different time and he was conducting legitimate research. Since then, mostly prompted by Tuskegee, standards of protection for people in health studies have been established.Reverby will share such thoughts, and details of the research and investigation at a Talk and Tea on Sunday, Aug. 7, at 2 p.m. at the Cornwall Library. It is part of the Cornwall Historical Society’s summer exhibit, Care to Cure. Admission is free. Refreshments will be served.