The Tuskegee Experiment was a 40-year study project that investigated the consequences of untreated syphilis. In the United States, black rural farm workers were the focus of government-sponsored research, and they were kept in the dark while they suffered. A whistleblower exposed the study’s corrupt and immoral goals after going to the press in 1972.
Over four decades, the United States Public Health Service (PHS) studied the impact of untreated illness on 600 Black males in Macon County, Alabama. In 1932, 399 of the 600 sharecroppers to be studied had already been diagnosed with venereal disease.
The farmers were led to believe they were being treated for “bad blood,” which could refer to a number of diseases. The study was conducted at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
The disease tragically spread to the men’s families. By the end of the tests, 28 men had died from syphilis, 100 more had died from disease-related complications, 40 women had contracted the disease, and 19 children had been born with congenital syphilis.
After several years, a New York foundation has apologized for its role in the infamous experiment. According to the Associated Press, the Milbank Memorial Fund’s function was to pay for the deceased men’s funeral expenses up to $100 if their widows agreed to an autopsy so doctors could further investigate their dead husbands’ bodies.
The fund’s apologies were accompanied by a donation to the Voices of our Fathers Legacy Foundation, an organization for descendants. According to the Milbank Memorial Fund, it was included in the study in 1935 after Hugh Cumming, the US surgeon general at the time, requested it. Milbank paid a total of $20,150 for approximately 234 autopsies, according to a study by historian Susan M. Reverby.
Christopher F. Koller, the Fund’s president, stated that there is no justification for what occurred. “The upshot of this was real harm,” he told the Associated Press.
Sen. Edward Kennedy called three Congressional hearings in 1972 after Peter Buxtun, a White PHS venereal disease researcher, disclosed the Tuskegee study’s sinister nature to the public via the Washington Star. Buxtun and other scientists testified.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a class-action lawsuit, which was eventually settled for $9 million. As part of the settlement, the surviving Tuskegee study patients and their families received free care.
Tuskegee’s discoveries prompted Congress to pass the National Research Act in 1974, which aided in the development of guidelines for human medical research. On May 16, 1997, then-President of the United States, Bill Clinton, apologized to the study participants and their families, calling the act “racist.”
