The Evaluation of Serodiagnostic Tests for Syphilis in the United States

William A. Hinton (1883–1959): Diagnosing and Confronting Racism in the Medical Profession

“…Among blood samples, Hinton's innovative technique achieved a robust 81% sensitivity for untreated primary syphilis, 100% for untreated secondary syphilis, and 84.5% for treated "late" syphilis, with a 99.3% specificity among "normal" controls. 2 [18] In 1935, Hinton was asked to serve as a Special Consultant to the USPHS. [8] And by the late 1930s, national legislative hearings to appropriate Congressional funds toward the control of syphilis prominently featured Massachusetts' syphilis control efforts, which directly informed the Venereal Diseases Control and Prevention Act of 1938, authorizing federal funds to states for such purposes.…”

Syphilis and Human Experimentation From World War II to the Present: A Historical Perspective and Reflections on Ethics

“…Publications began to appear in 1934 38 and 1935. 39 When the first study comparing treated and untreated men with syphilis was published a year later, nontreponemal diagnostic tests were already in use. 40 The 1936 paper specifically emphasized the incidence of cardiovascular involvement in the Tuskegee population.…”

The Light of Many Minds: ROYAL FACULTY OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS OF GLASGOW GLASGOW LOCK HOSPITAL TRUST PRIZE ESSAY

“…If we now send all the sera to say ten reputable laboratories where technical errors are unlikely, we can be quite confident that, although there may be agreement about the majority of results, there will be disagreement over the results from many cases. Experiments of this kind have often been performed, either as large-scale surveys or in the more informal exchange of sera between friendly laboratories (League of Nations, 1928;Cumming, Hazen, Sanford, Senear, Simpson, and Vonderlehr, 1935;Parran, Hazen, Mahoney, Sanford, Senear, Simpson, and Vonderlehr, 1937). Some tests are very sensitive and the results will be positive in cases (early syphilis, for example) when other tests are still negative; these sensitive tests will be much more likely to give positive results with diseases other than syphilis or even with an occasional normal person.…”