More minorities are needed to participate in medical trials to find cures for diseases and conditions affecting them, but to make that happen, both researchers and potential participants need to change their way of thinking.

That's the message of a 30-minute film produced by WPXI-TV and the University of Pittsburgh's Research Center of Excellence on Minority Health Disparities. It will air on WPXI at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. It will be rebroadcast on PCNC at noon and 8:30 p.m. Sunday.

The film "Medical Research, Bioethics and Race: Where Do We Go From Here" was funded by the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health.

Narrated and interviewed by WPXI anchor David Johnson, the film opens with the premise that a lack of trust limits minority participation in medical trials that could save lives. It traces a history of unethical research treatment of minorities, such as the Tuskegee syphilis study, as the reason for such distrust.

When that U.S. Public Health Service study began in 1932, with 600 black men -- 399 with syphilis, 201 without the disease -- there was no treatment available for the disease. However, when penicillin became the standard treatment in 1947, the medicine was withheld from participants in the study who had syphilis. No informed consent was obtained from the men, now a required procedure in all research.

President Bill Clinton apologized for Tuskegee during his term in office.

There remains a marked absence of minority participation in medical trials despite protections against unethical research.

Jim Thomas, a professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said "it's time to move on ..." but the film makes clear through actors' role-play that the attitudes of researchers are also at fault.

White researchers concentrate on recruiting participants with speed and efficiency, Dr. Thomas said, while African-Americans are looking to converse and build relationships.

In a skit of a "bad way" to recruit a cancer patient for a drug trial, the doctor cuts short the patient's attempt to tell his case history, abruptly tells him how much time he has left to live, and pressures him to sign the contract for participation in the trial.

In the "good way," the doctor listens to the patient's story, tells him with obvious sympathy that his lifespan is limited, but adds hopefully that the experimental drug he would like the patient to try might increase that time.

"The legacy of distrust is a long one," said Dr. Sandra Quinn, associate dean for student affairs of Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health. "Doctors must learn how to bridge the gap of distrust."

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