Random Bits & Pieces

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November 16, 1972 - Memorandum Terminating the Tuskegee Syphilis Study

An infamous chapter in medical ethics, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was begun in 1929 as a cooperative study involving the Public Health Service and state and local health departments in six Southern states. It evolved into a study of possible differences in the effects of the disease on Caucasians and African Americans. During the study a number of African American participants in Tuskegee, Alabama, with syphilis were left untreated but were observed, studied and compared to a control group which did not have the disease. The study continued until the 1970s when its existence was exposed to the public, resulting in Department of Health Education and Welfare and Congressional hearings on the ethics of medical experiments on human subjects.

(via southerntellect-deactivated2012)