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Tuskegee Syphilis Study
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The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is a tragic episode in the history of the U.S. government’s top health agency, the U.S. Public Health Service. The scandalous study is reminiscent of the gruesome practices of the notorious Joseph Mengele, the Nazi physician who conducted monstrous experiments on Jews imprisoned in concentration camps. The scandal demonstrates that U.S. government funded scientists aren’t incapable of performing similar atrocities.
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The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is one of the most horrendous examples of research carried out in disregard of basic ethical principles of conduct. The publicity surrounding the study was one of the major influences leading to the codification of protection for human subjects.
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Though not a clinical trial, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study has put research in a bad light for many Americans, especially minority populations. Conducted by the US Public Health Service (PHS) from 1932 to 1972, the study intentionally withheld treatment for 399 poor African American men suffering from syphilis. The men were sharecroppers and laborers from Macon County, Alabama.
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The Tuskegee Syphilis Study documents available on-line are samples of records at the Southeast Region documenting the administrative history of the Study. (Records revealing the identity of participants in the study are restricted.) The inquiry began in 1929 as a cooperative study involving the Public Health Service, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and state and local health departments in six Southern states. It evolved into an investigation of possible differences in the effects of the disease in Caucasian and African-Americans. During the Study, a number of Negroes in Tuskegee (Macon County), Alabama, were purposely left untreated, but were observed, studied, and compared to a control group that did not have the disease. The Study continued until the 1970's when its existence was made known publicly, resulting in Department of Health Education and Welfare and Congressional hearings on the ethics of medical experiments on human subjects.
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The Tuskegee Syphilis Study began. Two hundred poor black men with syphilis began a long term experiment in which those men were to be studied. They were never told of their illness, and treatment was denied them even AFTER the availability of a cure made the study's objectives worthless. As many as 100 of the original 200 died as a direct or indirect result of the illness. The wives and children of the subjects ... suffered as a result of the disease. (The government office supervising the study was the predecessor to today's Centers for Disease Control (CDC)).
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The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was conducted from 1932 to 1972 around Tuskegee, Alabama. Six hundred poor — and mostly illiterate — African-American males, 400 of whom were infected with syphilis, were monitored for 40 years. Free medical examinations were given; ... subjects were not told about their diagnosis. Even though a cure (penicillin) became available in the 1950s, the study continued until 1972 with participants being denied proper treatment or given fake treatments and placebos, instead. In some cases, when subjects were diagnosed as having syphilis by other physicians, researchers intervened to prevent treatment. Many of the subjects died slow and painful deaths of syphilis during the study, which was stopped in 1973 by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare only after its existence was publicized and became a political embarrassment.
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Tuskegee Syphilis Study