Peter Jan Buxtun, a Holocaust refugee and a whistleblower who played a crucial role in ending one of the nation’s most notoriously unethical medical research experiments, the Tuskegee syphilis study, died May 18 at a Sacramento-area memory-care center due to Alzheimer’s disease. He was 86.
Buxtun, a former San Francisco resident, was working as a venereal disease investigator for the U.S. Public Health Service in the city’s Castro neighborhood in the mid-1960s when he learned about the experiment and the unethical practices surrounding it.
Beginning in 1932 and continuing for four decades, the Alabama-based study involved 399 Black men who were denied treatment for syphilis so researchers could observe the effects of the disease when untreated. Many of the men were impoverished sharecroppers who were incentivized to participate in the study in exchange for free medical care.
The men were not aware of the nature of the experiment, nor were they informed of their syphilis diagnosis. They were instead given placebos and ineffective procedures as treatment for “bad blood.” Despite penicillin becoming the standard treatment for syphilis by 1947, the antibiotic was not administered to the participants. According to the federal government, up to 100 of them died as a result of syphilis by the late 1960s.
“I was aghast. What the hell do they think they’re doing?” Buxtun told Tablet magazine in 2021. “I’m in San Francisco working hard to fight the spread of syphilis and they’re not treating people? My job was to track down those spreading syphilis and gonorrhea and get them a shot of penicillin. I was going into terrible neighborhoods, making sure carriers got medication, and in Tuskegee they’re not even treating men they know are sick. I couldn’t understand it.”
Buxtun spent several years advocating for the end of the study and raising awareness about the unethical practices it involved. He spoke to journalists and doctors and even wrote a report to his Public Health Service superiors comparing it to Nazi concentration camp experiments.
“It just irked me what was going on down there,” he recalled in the Tablet interview. “What rotten bastards they were.”
Finally, in July 1972, the Associated Press broke the news to the public by leveraging documents Buxtun had collected over the years. This led to congressional hearings and the enactment of the National Research Act in 1974, which enforced modern medical study practices, including informed consent. A class-action lawsuit was also settled in 1974 for $10 million, on behalf of the study participants and their heirs. President Bill Clinton formally apologized for the experiment in the late 1990s.
“Peter’s life experiences led him to immediately identify the study as morally indefensible and to seek justice in the form of treatment for the men. Ultimately, he could not relent,” Ted Pestorius, a deputy director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a 2022 program to mark the 50th anniversary of the study’s demise.
Buxtun was born in Prague in 1937, the only son of a Czech Jewish father and Austrian Catholic mother. His father worked at a family-run textile factory in the Czech town of Upice. The family fled the country in 1939 when the Nazis invaded, making their way to Brussels and then London before immigrating to the U.S., where they settled in rural Oregon.
His upbringing as a refugee influenced his strong sense of morality and understanding that governments can do wrong, according to close friend David Golden.
Buxtun studied political science and art history at the University of Oregon, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1959. He served in the Army as a combat medic and psychiatric social worker before he joined the Public Health Service. He then attended UC Hastings College of Law in San Francisco and pursued several other careers, including as an investor and antiques dealer.
Buxton also dedicated nearly 20 years trying to recover family properties confiscated by the Nazis.
According to Golden, Buxtun was passionate about traveling and exploring the world, particularly enjoying trips to Africa, India and Europe, especially Germany. He collected antiques, specializing in military arms and swords, and historic gambling equipment from the Gold Rush era. He wrote essays and articles and gave presentations about his involvement in the Tuskegee syphilis story.
Throughout his life, Buxtun was a staunch advocate for personal freedoms and often spoke against prohibition, whether it was drugs, prostitution or firearms, according to Golden. Buxtun was a member of the Independent Institute, the Lincoln Club and the National Rifle Association. He also volunteered with the Suicide Prevention Hotline.
He left no immediate survivors. Donations in his memory may be made to the National WWII Museum.