EP 46: The Tuskegee Experiment

This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing the Tuskegee Experiment which was a clinical study conducted by the United States Public Health Service from 1932 to 1972 in which the U.S. Public Health Service told the hundreds of Black men that were a part of this study that, by participating, they would be treated for “bad blood” and would receive free healthcare. 

But, instead of receiving healthcare, the USPHS “treated” the participants with placebos and known to be ineffective methods while ensuring that these men would be denied real medical treatment from any other facility. The men in the program were also never advised that many of them actually had syphilis...and that this was the reason USPHS had selected them for the study. 

As a result of this withholding of information and withholding treatment, many of the men involved in this study would later die of syphilis and an additional 40 wives of the men in the study would contract the disease with 19 children born with congenital syphilis. 

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 - Rachel and Leah