Summary Of The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The Tuskegee syphilis study was an experiment conducted by the United States Public Health Service in 1932. The purpose of this study was to determine the natural curse of latent syphilis in Black males who according to this article were prone to this disease. The subjects were chosen by Dr. Raymond Vonderlehr, Vonderlehr was sent to Macon County which was thought to have a large percentage of syphilitic black men to collect a sample of men with latent syphilis. It is mentioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that “doctors might have actually injected those men with syphilis in order to study them” (Skloot 186). These subjects were mostly sharecroppers and tenant farmer that were mostly illiterate, poorly educated, and between the age of twenty-five and a sixty. In order to determine if someone had latent syphilis, Vonderlehr had to run a thorough physical on them.
And in order to gain the cooperation of the unknowing subject “They were told they were ill and were promised free care. Offered therapy, they became willing subjects” (Brandt 5) but the drugs they received were mostly ineffective or insufficient dosages. The USPHS did not inform the men that they were part of an experiment and wanted to maintain their interest until they could perform the final procedure which was a spinal tap to test for neurosyphilis. Because of the study, the subjects were denied actual medical treatment from other doctors most of the men who weren't in the control group had their life expectancy decreased by about twenty percent and “more than 30 percent of the test group autopsied had died directly from advanced syphilitic lesions” (Brandt