9) The Tuskegee Syphilus Study
Between 1932 and 1972, the US Public Health Service conducted a clinical study on rural, underprivileged African American men who had contracted syphilis. The Public Health Service never informed these men they had a sexually transmitted disease, nor did they offer treatment, even after penicillin became available as a cure in the 1940s.
Horrible as it may be, it’s true. Though the subjects would have willingly received treatment, they were told they had “bad blood”. Once World War II began, 250 of the men registered for the draft and only then were informed they had syphilis. However, the PHS denied them treatment. By the early 1970s, 128 of the original 399 men had died of syphilis and syphilis-related complications, 40 of their wives had the disease and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis.
This isn’t the first time such an experiment has been carried out. Reportedly, a similar experiment was conducted on prisoners, soldiers, and patients of a mental hospital in Guatemala which involved the PHS deliberately infecting patients and then treating them with antibiotics.
