Tuskegee Syphilis Case Study Essay

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The Public Health Service started working on this study in 1932 in collaboration with Tuskegee University, a historically black college located in Alabama “ Macon County high prevalence of syphilis, coupled with a nearly perfect treatment vacuum, suggested to Taliaferro Clark not a need for treatment , but an opportunity for experimentation” (Washington 161). Investigators were fascinated with the idea and rounded up a total of 600 impoverished, African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama for the case. Of those men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 did not have the syphilis disease. The men were given free medical care, meals, and was told that they would also receive free burial insurance …show more content…
The men were told that they were being treated for "bad blood". "the longest and most infamous -- but hardly the worst -- experimental abuse of African Americans. It has been eclipsed in both numbers and egregiousness by other abusive medical studies” (Washington) .This study was meant to study the progression of syphilis in black men, since many scientists had claimed that the disease formed differently in blacks than in whites. The african american men were told that they would be granted treatment for their syphilis, when in reality, the whole purpose of the experiments were to withhold treatment from the poor, sick African-Americans residing in the area so that physicians could properly document the progression of the disease “As men began to die the public health s performed autopsies and regularly published the results in medical journals “ (Washington 166).By the end of the study in 1972, only 74 of the test subjects were alive. Of the original 399 men, 28 had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children were born with congenital
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