And Dr. Irwin Schatz, who became a lone critic of the now-notorious Tuskegee syphilis study years before it was exposed in the press, has died at the age of 83. For four decades until 1972, the U.S. government studied the long-term effects of untreated syphilis on poor, black men. After reading of the study in a medical journal in 1964, Schatz wrote, “I am utterly astounded by the fact that physicians allow patients with potentially fatal disease to remain untreated when effective therapy is available.” But a study co-author dismissed his letter, saying it was the first of its kind they had received. Schatz died of cancer at home in Hawaii.