Treated Differently and Not at All

All the Time

In 1932, the United States Public Health Service, or USPHS, established a study entitled “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.”

600 black men were involved in the study, and their medical exams, meals and burial insurance was paid for. 399 patients suffered from syphilis going into the experiment, 201 did not have the disease. None of the patients gave consent to the study, all of the patients were misled as to the true nature of the study, and none were treated with penicillin, the preferred treatment at the time, easily available and denied to the test subjects for decades.

Resources:

Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid, 2006

AP was there - https://apnews.com/article/business-science-health-race-and-ethnicity-syphilis-e9dd07eaa4e74052878a68132cd3803a

Tuskegee study timeline - https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm

Syphilis - https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/pregnancy/effects/syphilis.html#:~:text=Approximately%2040%25%20of%20babies%20born,%2C%20meningitis%2C%20or%20skin%20rashes.

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