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Black History 365 | # 230 The Untreated Syphilis Torture Studies (1932-1972)

June 1, 2025

The Untreated Syphilis Torture Studies is widely known as The Tuskegee Experiments. This tyrannical sadism was conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) from 1932 and 1972. What happened here was sick and twisted to say the least. The study was supposed to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis. Syphilis is an infection caused by bacteria. Most often, it spreads through sexual contact. The disease starts as a sore that's often painless and typically appears on the genitals, rectum or mouth. Syphilis spreads from person to person through direct contact with these sores. It also can be passed to a baby during pregnancy and childbirth and sometimes through breastfeeding. Without treatment, syphilis can damage the heart, brain or other organs. It can even lead to blindness. It can become life-threatening. So, the plan was to infect black men with syphilis — not treat them and study them as they died. Charles Pollard, a survivor of the torture is quoted as saying "All I knew was that they just kept saying I had the bad blood - they never mentioned syphilis to me. Not even once." The U.S. Public Health Service collaborated with local doctors and nurses to recruit roughly 400 black men presumed to have non-contagious late stage syphillis as well as 200 non-syphilitic black men as their control group. Participants were told that they would receive free drugs and care for their condition. This was a lie. Research performed spinal taps on these men to investigate neurological consequences of the disease. When these men died the USPHS would fund funerals in exchange of studying the bodies of the dead men. The public "studies" note these men as volunteers when they were not. 10 years into these tortuous “experiments” treatment for syphilis had advanced, it was discovered that penicillin cured the disease in its early stages, but in Tuskegee they continued to torture these men and continued to withhold the knowledge of the cure from these men. Similar morally abhorrent studies were conducted on inmates, sex workers, soldiers, and mental health patients in Guatemala in 1940 by the U.S. as well as similar “studies” secretly infecting patients with viral hepatitis and cancer cells. What?

Tags Black History 365
← Black History 365 | # 231 The Bellville ThreeBlack History 365 | # 229 Henrietta Lacks →

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