 And Peter Buxton, the U.S. government whistleblower who exposed the Tuskegee syphilis study, has died at 86. Starting in 1966, Buxton started sounding the alarm when he learned about the ongoing experiment as a federal public health employee. The government-led study, which started in 1932, observed 400 black men in rural Alabama who had syphilis but were denied antibiotic treatment so scientists could observe the disease's progression.