Tuskegee aims to remove stain of unethical human research
Dr. Timothy Turner is the new deputy director of Research and Training in the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care.
Turner will serve as associate director of Project Export and coordinator of its Public Health and Bioethics in Education, Research and Training Core. He also will assist the director of the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care by strengthening and sharpening the conceptual and operational focus and work of the university on issues of key concern.
“The principal objective of this appointment is to strengthen the university’s ability to develop more synergies among the life sciences, including agriculture, biomedical sciences, humanities and the social sciences in relation to the work of the Bioethics Center,” Tuskegee University President Benjamin F. Payton said.
“This appointment is intended to expand the center’s ability to marshal the core bioethics faculty and staff strength necessary to carry out its central mission. At the heart of this mission lies the task of understanding and ameliorating the most urgent bioethical challenges that confront African Americans and other underserved groups. These include understanding and reducing health disparities in the Black Belt counties of rural Alabama.”
Turner currently serves as professor of biology at Tuskegee University and brings an extensive background of education and experience to this position. He received the Ph.D. in endocrinology/tumor biology from the University of California-Berkeley and the B.S. degree in biology from Jackson State University, Jackson, Miss.
Turner was a post doctoral fellow in developmental biology at the University of California, San Francisco and in molecular and cellular biology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Turner has also served as a teaching associate at the University of California, as an administrative assistant for the MARC Program at the University of California and as a histology laboratory instructor at the same institution.
Turner holds membership in the Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society, Sigma Xi National Research Honor Society, the Tissue Culture Association, the American Association for Cancer Research, and he is an adjunct member of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Cancer Center.
His current position at Tuskegee includes serving as program director of the University’s Minority Biomedical Research Support Program and the principal investigator of the Morehouse School of Medicine/Tuskegee University/University of Alabama at Birmingham Comprehensive Cancer Center Partnership.
Turner’s new role as deputy director of Research and Training for the Bioethics Center will facilitate interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research and training within and among the social sciences, humanities and the life and biomedical sciences. “This approach is mandatory for effective work in the inherently multidisciplinary field of bioethics,” Payton said.
Tuskegee University established the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care in January 1999 in partial response to the apology of President William J. Clinton for the U.S. Public Health Service Study on Syphilis conducted in Macon County, Ala., from 1932 to 1972. The negative legacy of this study has been cited as a hindrance to the full participation of African Americans and others in medical care and scientific research. It is the aim of the Bioethics Center to reverse the burden of this negative legacy.