Bad Science: Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

"The United States government did something that was wrong-deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens... clearly racist."

President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining
Survivors, May 16, 1997

Poor farmers were used in a cruel and inhumane experiment, suffering in the final stages of syphilis, forced to go without treatment to serve as guinea pigs. No, this wasn't Nazi Germany but Alabama, USA. No, it wasn't before the Civil War. It happened from the years 1932-1972. Yes, it went on for forty years.

The U.S. Public Health Service experimented on 399 black men, leaving them untreated in the last stages of syphilis. The men were told they were being treated for 'bad blood'. The information was meant all along to be taken from the men post- mortem. You read that right, the doctors intentionally let the men die savagely, to make notes of the paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death they suffered. One doctor wrote, "We have no further interest in these patients until they die".

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was, 'the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history". - James H. Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, New York Free Press, 1993

To keep the men returning for the painful spinal tap that was administered as part of the experiment, the doctors would hint that any noncompliance would put an end to the 'free' treatment.

The study was to determine how syphilis affected blacks opposed to whites although there were no white folks harmed in this experiment. The theory was white people sustained more neurological damage and the blacks were more susceptible to cardiovascular damage when afflicted with syphilis. Did they feel justified in sending these men to a horrible death in the name of science?

The Public Health Service praised the study as one of the greatest merits to science. After forty years, the end result was reported, 'nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States'. It took them forty years to come up with that.

The Surgeon General of the United States sent the men participating in the study who were still alive certificates of appreciation. I had a trouble typing that. Imagine the men in the study living it. You may think it was just the racist Southerner with his superior attitude toward the black man conducting the experiment. The truth is much darker. The Tuskegee Institute, the black university founded by Booker T. Washington is where the experiment got its name. Its hospital is where the study was carried out, with black doctors and black nurses in attendance from its inception until its forty year end.

True, there wasn't a cure for syphilis until the discovery of penicillin in the 1940's.
The men in the Tuskegee experiment were denied that life-saving medication after it was discovered. Their story finally came to light in 1972. The Public Health Service claimed the men 'volunteered'. A class action law suit granted the men and their families a $10 million out-of-court settlement. Only the whites participating in the experiment were named as defendants in the suit, the blacks were left in the dark. The government didn't end the experiment officially until the whistle was blown and the public became outraged. Leaves you wondering just how long it would have continued and what exactly still goes on to this day...