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Tuskegee: secret science experiments on black males
Other | Wednesday 10th October 2018 | Osh
Known officially as the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” the Tuskegee experiment was a study of syphilis in black males. Unbeknownst to the applicants, who were promised special treatment for “bad blood”, what they had actually signed up for was a secret experiment conducted by the US health department to look the progression of the deadly venereal disease, Syphilis.
The study involved 600 black men – 399 with syphilis, 201 who did not have the disease.
Researchers told the men they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term used to describe several ailments. What they were actually doing wasn’t treating the illness but simply watching the men until they died and examining the corpses to see how the disease had ravaged their systems.
The researchers never obtained informed consent from the men and never told the men that they were not being treated.
When the study began, treatment for syphilis was not effective, often dangerous and fatal. But even after penicillin was discovered and used as a treatment for the disease, the men in the Tuskegee study were not offered the antibiotic.
The study went on for 40 years leaving some men to live 40 years with their disease untreated. It wasn’t until the mid 60s that a public health service investigator, Peter Buxtun, questioned the ethics of the study. When his concerns were ignored, he leaked information on the study to the press, creating massive public outrage that led to the study being halted.
