No scientific experiment inflicted more damage on the collective psyche of black Americans than the Tuskegee study. After Jean Heller broke the story in 1972, news of the tragedy spread in the black community. Confronted with the experiment's moral bankruptcy, many blacks lost faith in the government and no longer believed health officials who spoke on matters of public concern. Consequently, when a terrifying new plague swept the land in the 1980s and 1990s, the Tuskegee study predisposed many blacks to distrust health authorities, a fact many whites had difficulty understanding.