By Jane Glanzer

What was it?  The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor, rural black men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government.

More Information  The study began in 1932, at the hospital of the prestigious Tuskegee Institute, a traditionally African American college located in Alabama. The U.S. Public Health Service sponsored it, and white physicians within the public health service administered it. The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of syphilis in African American men. At the time the study began, there was no cure for syphilis.  There were treatments for syphilis available when the study began, but it was decided to withhold even those from participants without their knowledge and chart the course of untreated syphilis in African American males. Four hundred men with syphilis were initially enrolled in the project, mostly poor uneducated African American tenant farmers from the surrounding area, along with 200 uninfected men who served as controls.  In the late 1940s, penicillin first became available to the general public as a cure for syphilis. However, the decision was made not to make it available to study participants, who were allowed to continue in the study without any treatment for their disease. They were continually supplied with placebos, and no attempt was made to inform them of possible alternatives to the "medicine" that they were being given. As late as 1969 the Centers for Disease Control recommended the study continue.  Finally in 1972, following unflattering news reports, the study was finally shut down, and those subjects that were still part of the study received penicillin. A report was issued by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare that stated that the study was "scientifically unsound and its results are disproportionately meager composed with known risks to the human subjects involved." The U.S. Congress, led by Senator Edward Kennedy, held hearings in 1973 on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

resources   