Description: Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and its Legacy, by Susan M. Reverby, is a comprehensive analysis of the notorious study of untreated syphilis, which took place in and around Tuskegee, AL, from 1932 to 1972. The study involved hundreds of African-American men told by doctors from the U.S. Public Health Service they were being treated, not just watched, for their late-stage syphilis. Reverby examines the study and its aftermath from multiple perspectives to explain what happened and why the st
study (1603) racism (246) syphilis (26) infamous (12) tuskegee (11) medical experimentation (3) examining tuskegee (1) infamous study (1) untreated syphilis (1) government experiment (1)
S ince 1972, "Tuskegee" has become a word that stands for an infamous research study: a forty year endeavor on the part of the United States Public Health Service (PHS) to not treat African American men with late stage and presumably non-infectious syphilis, while promising them the aspirins, tonics and diagnostic spinal taps were treatment. The Study turned into a long effort (1932-72) to track nearly 400 men (the subjects) assumed to have the disease and nearly 200 men (the controls) assumed to be disease
In the early 1930s, syphilis — a sexually transmitted disease full of moral stigma and dangerous health effects — was a widespread public health problem in many communities across the country. As part of its effort to reach out to underserved rural black communities in particular, the Rosenwald Foundation and the PHS set up a demonstration project in six southern states to track and treat the disease. When the funds dried up in the Depression, the PHS's idea was to study in one county what happened without
For the next forty years, the PHS came back into Macon County for more tests of the men, tried to follow up those who had left, and promised families money for burial in exchange for the right to autopsy those who died. None of the men were injected with syphilis, as it is often rumored. Not all of the men died of the disease. The doctors were supposed to choose only those not contagious, but some of the men did pass on the disease to their wives and sexual partners, and then possibly on to a fetus in utero