Here, about two blocks apart, are two H.I.V. clinics intended to serve black residents. One is an outpost of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, the city's largest AIDS service organization. Patients have been slow to come for H.I.V. testing and medical care. The reasons are varied. Many blacks have a deep-seated and, some experts would say, justified mistrust of doctors, a legacy of the notorious Tuskegee experiments on black men with syphilis.
Poverty is also at work.
I didn't want anyone seeing me. That kind of hush-hush attitude, experts say, contributes to the high death rates from AIDS among African Americans. In addition to his Federal job, Dr. Goosby sees patients one day a week at D.C. General. All are African American. It's a situation where you have somebody you went to junior high school with who is the receptionist at the clinic.