tuskegee experiment
Following a background report on the experiment, Charlayne Hunter-Gault looks at what the legacy of Tuskegee. [1]
As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched. [2]
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male (also known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Public Health Service Syphilis Study, or the Tuskegee Experiment) was a clinical study, conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama by the U.S. Public Health Service. [3]
Read a commentary by Tuskegee Legacy Committee Chair Dr. Vanessa Gamble. [...] For Morning Edition, NPR’s Alex Chadwick reports on how the Tuskegee experiment was discovered after 40 years of silence. [4]
Informed that they were being treated for ‘bad blood,’ their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. [5]
Nurses examine one of the Tuskegee syphilis study participants. [4]
Beginning in 1932, the federal government sponsored a study to examine the impact of syphilis involving black men. [1]
Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study were not required to give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had “bad blood” and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating. [3]
The experiment’s name comes from the Tuskegee Institute, the black university founded by Booker T. Washington. [5]
Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,”1 their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. [2]
The government doctors who participated in the study failed to obtain informed consent from the subjects in a study of disease with a known risk to human life. [6]
How this knowledge would have changed clinical treatment of syphilis is uncertain. [5]
Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies and to recognize each stage of the disease in hopes of developing treatments aimed for each one. [3]
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term used to describe several illnesses, including syphilis, anemia and fatigue. [4]
Sources:
[1] Online NewsHour: Tuskegee Experiment and Apology — May 16, 1997
[2] The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment ‘ Infoplease.com
[3] Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male - Wikipedia, the …
[4] NPR : Remembering the Tuskegee Experiment
[5] The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
[6] THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT