John Roderick 'Rod' Heller (February 27, 1905 – May 4, 1989), was the head in 1943–1948 of what was then called the "Venereal Disease" section of the United States Public Health Service (PHS). He then became the director of the National Cancer Institute, and then president/chief executive officer of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.[1]
Dr. Heller is best known for having been the assistant in charge of on-site medical operations in the Tuskegee syphilis study, a longitudinal clinical examination by PHS of untreated syphilis in U.S. African-American males. Very serious questions of medical ethics have been raised about this study and those involved in it.[2] Heller was born in Fair Play, South Carolina and died in Bethesda, Maryland.
- ^ "Dr. John R. Heller: An Oral History" (PDF). National Institutes of Health. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 10, 2015. Retrieved December 2, 2015.
- ^ "Faces of Tuskegee". Michigan State University. Retrieved December 5, 2015.