10. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
One of the most deeply shameful parts of American medical history is the treatment of the victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis study. The study was a 40-year project, taking place from 1932 to 1972. The subjects were poor African-American men who were lied to and manipulated throughout the entirety of the study. The men were never told they had syphilis, merely that they had “bad blood.” They were treated with placebos before any cure was found, and denied medication after one was.
When penicillin was discovered in the 1940s, it also served as a cure for syphilis bacteria. However, the men in the Tuskegee study were never told of this discovery, nor were they provided with the medication needed to cure their disease easily. Instead, the conductors of the survey quietly watched the men and documented their painful descent into mania and death from the now-treatable disease.
By the time the study became public knowledge in 1972, 28 men had died from the intentionally untreated illness. One hundred more died from untreated complications. The disease infected forty spouses and 19 children due to husbands and fathers going untreated. The study led to a massive overhaul of how ethical reviews are conducted for research experiments, and none too soon.