Paron Hall
Parran Hall is the main building for the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health. It is the legacy of the man it is named after. Thomas Parran Jr, the former U.S. Surgeon General and Founding Dean of the school, played an active role in drafting the Social Security Act and founding the World Health Organization and advocated for universal healthcare. However, he was also the U.S. Surgeon General who oversaw two of the worst cases of bioethically unjust experiments in U.S. history; The Tuskegee Study and the Guatemala Syphilis Experiment. [1]
Background
Thomas Parran Jr. (September 28, 1892 – February 16, 1968) was an American physician and Public Health Service officer. Parran was born and raised near St. Leonard, Maryland, on his family's tobacco farm. He was tutored at home by a relative and attended St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, on a scholarship (1911, A.B.; 1915, A.M.). Finances influenced his decision to attend Georgetown University School of Medicine (1915, M.D.) and to follow with an internship at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. A lifelong interest in research was sparked during medical school. The American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association named its lifetime achievement award after Parran in recognition of his work to raise awareness of sexually transmitted diseases. [2]
Controversy
Parran, who served as the first dean of Pitt’s School of Public Health from 1948 to 1958, was involved in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study while serving as U.S. Surgeon General from 1936 to 1948. He was also involved in a government-sponsored study that infected prisoners and mental institution patients with venereal disease in Guatemala. The Tuskegee, Alabama, study withheld information and treatment from 399 black males with syphilis so researchers could observe the progress of the disease. Over the course of the 40-year study, 28 men died from syphilis, 40 spouses were infected, and 19 children were born with a congenital form of the disease. As far back as the mid-1800s, populations that were devalued in American society — racial minorities, people with disabilities and mental illness, orphans, prisoners, the elderly – became unconsenting subjects of scientific experiments. Documentation of experiments on African slaves dates to the 1840s. [3] Before the discovery of penicillin as a treatment, syphilis was deadly. Yet hundreds of black men served as test subjects in a 40-year experiment for which Parran served as the clear inspiration, Dober said. In that period, researchers failed to give them new treatment and did not inform them that the goal of the study was to catalogue the harms of untreated syphilis on human subjects. [4]
References
- ↑ Perillo, Mallory. Naming Controversy Surrounding Parran Hall. Panoramas. 28 May 2018. Retrieved February 2 2021.
- ↑ Thomas Parran Jr.. Wikipedia. Retrieved February 2 2021.
- ↑ University of Pittsburgh Calls Attention to a Dishonorable History in Experimentation. Western Pennsylvania Disability History & Action Consortium. 15 Aug 2018. Retrieved February 2 2021.
- ↑ Benzing, Jeffrey. Pitt to remove Dr. Thomas Parran’s name from university building. Here’s why. Public Source. 27 March 2018. Retrieved February 2 2021
