The Tuskegee experiment began in , at a time when there was no known cure for syphilis, a contagious venereal disease. After being recruited by the promise of free medical care, African American men in Macon County, Alabama were enrolled in the project, which aimed to study the full progression of the disease.
The participants were primarily sharecroppers, and many had never before visited a doctor. Doctors from the U. Public Health Service PHS , which was running the study, informed the participants— men with latent syphilis and a control group of others who were free of the disease—they were being treated for bad blood, a term commonly used in the area at the time to refer to a variety of ailments. The men were monitored by health workers but only given placebos such as aspirin and mineral supplements, despite the fact that penicillin became the recommended treatment for syphilis in , some 15 years into the study.
PHS researchers convinced local physicians in Macon County not to treat the participants, and instead, research was done at the Tuskegee Institute. Now called Tuskegee University, the school was founded in with Booker T. Washington as its first teacher. In the mids, a PHS venereal disease investigator in San Francisco named Peter Buxton found out about the Tuskegee study and expressed his concerns to his superiors that it was unethical.
In response, PHS officials formed a committee to review the study but ultimately opted to continue it—with the goal of tracking the participants until all had died, autopsies were performed and the project data could be analyzed. Buxton then leaked the story to a reporter friend, who passed it on to a fellow reporter, Jean Heller of the Associated Press. Heller broke the story in July , prompting public outrage and forcing the study to finally shut down. By that time, 28 participants had perished from syphilis, more had passed away from related complications, at least 40 spouses had been diagnosed with it and the disease had been passed to 19 children at birth.
Additionally, new guidelines were issued to protect human subjects in U. As a result of the Tuskegee experiment, many African Americans developed a lingering, deep mistrust of public health officials and vaccines.
