The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

A Violation of the American Psychological Associations Ethical Principles

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, also known by its official name of “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”, began in 1932. The study took place in Macon County, Alabama at the Tuskegee Institute. The purpose of the study was to record the natural history of syphilis in Blacks, more specifically to “evaluate the extent of medical deterioration over time among a group of men with untreated syphilis” (Baker, Brawley, & Marks, 2005). There was no official treatment for syphilis at the time the study began. The U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) began to research the high incidence of syphilis in the rural South in 1929. Dr. Taliaferro Clark, a venereologist and the chief of the USPHS Venereal Disease Division, came up with the idea of starting the experiment. He stated, “As long as syphilis was so prevalent in Macon and most of the black went untreated throughout life, it only seemed natural that it would be valuable to observe the consequences” (Baker, Brawley, & Marks, 2005).

Recruitment for the study began in October 1932 and a 33-year-old nurse named Eunice Rivers was hired to recruit men into the experiment. The participants were never told what the study was for and were only told they would be treated for “bad blood”. They were also persuaded to participate by receiving incentives such as free lunches, transportation, and medical care. 399 men were enrolled into the experiment and were told by USPHS investigators that they would be treated for free with vitamins, tonics, and aspirins that would help cure their bad blood. “Even the painful spinal taps were explained not as a diagnostic procedure (to check for neurological syphilis) but as a back shot" (Reverby, 2007). The experiment was extended from its original time frame of 6-8 months and extended until death of the participant and an autopsy was added to the study. During World War II the USPHS convinced the Macon county draft board not to allow any of the participants of the experiment to be drafted into the war. After the war, penicillin became available for the treatment of syphilis but the USPHS purposefully withheld it from the men involved in the experiment in order to continue investigating the natural progression of the disease.

On July 26, 1972 Jean Heller of the Associated Press published her story on the front page of the New York Times exposing the experiment to the public after she was contacted by Peter Buxton, a venereal disease investigator for the USPHS. An investigation began and it was concluded that the experiment was ethically unjustified. In March of 1973 the experiment came to an end when treatment was authorized to the remaining participants. The last surviving participant, Ernest Hendon, died in January 2004, bringing closure