Abstract
In 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) initiated an experiment in Macon County, Alabama, to determine the natural course of untreated, latent syphilis in black males. The test comprised 400 syphilitic men, as well as 200 uninfected men who served as controls. The first published report of the study appeared in 1936 with subsequent papers issued every four to six years, through the 1960s. When penicillin became widely available by the early 1950s as the preferred treatment for syphilis, the men did not receive therapy. In fact on several occasions, the USPHS actually sought to prevent treatment. Moreover, a committee at the federally operated Center for Disease Control decided in 1969 that the study should be continued. Only in 1972, when accounts of the study first appeared in the national press, did the Department of Health, Education and Welfare halt the experiment.
Highlights
At thattimeseventy-fourof the test subjectswerestill alive; at leasttwenty-eight,but perhapsmorethan 100, had died directlyfrom advancedsyphiliticlesions.1In August 1972, HEWappointedaninvestigatorypanelwhichissueda report the followingyear.The panel foundthe studyto havebeen "ethicallyunjustified,"and argued that penicillin should havebeen providedto the men
BRANDTis a doctoralcandidatein the Department of History, Columbia University. He is presently writing a social history of venereal disease in the United States
Doctors generally discounted socioeconomic explanations of the state of black health, arguing that better medical care could not alter the evolutionary scheme.'8 These assumptions provide the backdrop for examining the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Summary
One doctor writing at the turn of the century estimated that the number of insane Negroes had increased thirteen-fold since the end of the Civil War.' Dr Murrell's conclusion echoed the most informed anthropological and ethnological data: So the scourge sweeps among them. Those that are treated are only half cured, and the effort to assimilatea complex civilizationdrivingtheir diseasedminds until the results are criminalrecords.Perhapshere, in conjunctionwith tuberculosis, will be the end of the negro problem.Disease will accomplish what man cannot do.. Doctors generally discounted socioeconomic explanations of the state of black health, arguing that better medical care could not alter the evolutionary scheme.' These assumptions provide the backdrop for examining the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
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