Tuskegee Experiment. The notorious Tuskegee experiment emerged from a pioneering health program to provide medical care to select groups of desperately poor
African Americans. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) conducted several studies of syphilis in African Americans from different parts of the
South, hoping to learn what percentage of the populations under study had syphilis and to treat sufferers from the disease. In 1932, the USPHS returned to Tuskegee, Alabama, the site of one of the earlier syphilis‐control demonstrations, to conduct a short‐term study (six months to a year) of the spontaneous evolution of syphilis in black males.
From the beginning, USPHS officials engaged in willful deceit. Instead of revealing their true purpose, they told African Americans in the community (most of whom were poor and uneducated sharecroppers) that the USPHS was offering free examinations and free treatment for a variety of illnesses. The USPHS did not act alone. Over time it received cooperation in varying degrees from the Alabama State Board of Health, the Macon County Health Department, the Tuskegee Institute, and the Milbank Memorial Fund. At the outset, the Alabama State Board of Health insisted that medical care be given to every man in the study who had syphilis. Grudgingly, the USPHS gave every subject who suffered from syphilis a modicum of treatment—not enough to effect a cure, but more than enough to interfere with the spontaneous evolution of the disease. In short, the study was hopelessly contaminated from the start.
Once launched, the Tuskegee experiment developed a life of its own, as USPHS officials quickly decided to continue the study until all the subjects had died. Subsequent events, such as the development of penicillin, the creation of the post–
World War II Nuremberg codes, regarding human experimentation, and the rise of the
civil rights movement, had little or no impact on the study. In 1972, however, a whistle‐blower named Peter Buxtun revealed the story to the press, and the Tuskegee experiment became a national scandal overnight. Faced with public outrage, the USPHS officially ended the study in 1972. In 1974, the Justice Department settled a lawsuit and paid damages to survivors of the experiment and to the estates of the deceased. In 1997, President Bill
Clinton formally apologized to the victims. While this act of atonement helped heal the wounds of those who were wronged, the Tuskegee experiment for many African Americans remained a potent metaphor for white deception and medical neglect. Indeed, it is a primary reason that many African Americans do not trust physicians, refuse to participate in clinical trials, and view health officials with suspicion.
See also
Medicine: From the 1870s to 1945;
Medicine: Since 1945;
Public Health;
Racism;
Sharecropping and Tenantry;
Venereal Disease.
Bibliography
James H. Jones , Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, rev. ed., 1993.
James H. Jones
