Tuskegee Syphilis Study: In the 1930s, researchers from the US Public Health Service and Alabama's Tuskegee Institute recruited nearly 400 Black men of low socioeconomic status to study the natural progression of syphilis.

Tuskegee Syphilis Study: In the 1930s, researchers from the US Public Health Service and Alabama's Tuskegee Institute recruited nearly 400 Black men of low socioeconomic status to study the natural progression of syphilis.

The initial study comprised 399 infected patients and 201 without the disease. None had the opportunity to consent to what happened; they were told they were simply being treated for “bad blood,” which colloquially at the time referred to anything from STDs to anemia to fatigue; many of the men did not even know they had syphilis. As compensation, they received free medical exams, free food, and burial insurance.



Penicillin became the gold standard for syphilis treatment by 1943, but researchers never offered it to the men in the Tuskegee study, instead letting them continue to suffer. The study continued for nearly 30 more years. More than 100 of the subjects died from syphilis directly or from complications from not being properly treated.

In 1972, the Associated Press broke the story of “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” and backlash was swift from the patients, the public, and the medical community. “I don’t know why the decision was made in 1946 not to stop the program,” remarked Don Prince, an official with the CDC. "I was unpleasantly surprised when I first came here and found out about it. It really puzzles me.”

The patients filed a lawsuit and eventually shared a $9 million settlement. In May 1997, then-President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology, which included the passage: “I am sorry that your federal government orchestrated a study so clearly racist. That can never be allowed to happen again.”

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