Grand Rounds: Susan M. Reverby "U.S. STD Inoculation Experiments in Guatemala and their Aftermath"

“Escaping Melodramas: The U.S. STD Inoculation Experiments in Guatemala and their Aftermath”

Susan M. Reverby, Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies Wellesley College.

Susan M. Reverby is the Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College and an historian of American health care, race, women, medicine and nursing. The first faculty hire at Wellesley in Women's Studies in 1982, she has taught at the college for nearly three decades. Her prize-winning book, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing is still considered one of the major overview histories of American nursing. She is perhaps best known for her two books on what is referred to as the infamous "Tuskegee" Syphilis study (1932-72), the longest running non-therapeutic research study in U.S. history that involved the United States Public Health Service and more than 600 African American men in the counties surrounding Tuskegee, Alabama. In 2010, her research and subsequent article on the U.S. Public Health Services STD Inoculation Studies in Guatemala led to an apology to Guatemala from the U.S. government at the highest levels, world-wide media coverage, and a presidential commission report in both the U.S. and Guatemala.  Reverby received her BS degree from Cornell University in Industrial and Labor Relations with a focus on labor and economic history. Her M.A. is from New York University and her Ph.D. from Boston University in American Studies.