Editorial
Tuskegee: could it happen again?
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is often paired with the horrific
Nazi experiments as the prime examples of what happens when powerless
subjects, the state's coercive power, racism, and medical research are
unmoored from ethical concerns. In the Tuskegee study, over 400 African-American men with late stage syphilis were never told they were
in a 40 year long (1932-72) experiment sponsored by the United States
Public Health Service to study "untreated syphilis in the male
Negro". The men were not directly offered treatment, even though they
were told that the aspirins, tonics, and rubs were to help cure their
"bad blood". With the support of community based physicians and
nurses, the local standard of "no care" in Alabama's "black
belt" became an orchestrated reality, even after penicillin became
widely available in the late l940s. The medical uncertainty over how to
treat late stage syphilis and the desire to hold on to the subjects
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Sexual transmitted infections (bacterial)
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