Democracy Dies in Darkness

Bill Jenkins, epidemiologist who tried to end Tuskegee syphilis study, dies at 73

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February 27, 2019 at 7:44 p.m. EST
Bill Jenkins in Atlanta in 1997. He tried to halt the government’s Tuskegee syphilis experiment and later worked as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Alan Mothner/AP)

Bill Jenkins, a government whistleblower who tried to halt the Tuskegee syphilis study that used black patients as guinea pigs, then switched his focus to epidemiology and spent decades battling racism in health care, died Feb. 17 at a hospital in Charleston, S.C. He was 73.

The cause was complications of sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease, said his wife, Diane Louise Rowley.