13. The Tuskegee experiments led to an official apology by the United States
In 1932 the Public Health Service and the Tuskegee University, a historically black institution, joined together to conduct experiments and studies in the treatment of syphilis. In time, 622 black men were enrolled in the study, with 431 entering into the study already infected with the disease. The men, who were nearly all impoverished, were enticed to participate through the promise of free meals and treatment, though the majority received no treatment at all and were used to monitor the natural progression of the disease. They were also offered free burial insurance. The study ran for forty years, and despite the proven success of penicillin in treating the disease none of the men received the antibiotic as treatment.
In July 1972, the story of the study and its ethical implications was told to the public in the Washington Star, and Congressional hearings were called for by Senator Edward Kennedy. The Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control hastily convened an investigation into the study and found that its participants had done so voluntarily, but nonetheless ended the study that year. Numerous investigations and counter-investigations kept the study in the public eye for two decades, as more of its abuses were revealed, to the embarrassment of the doctors involved and to the agencies for which they worked. In 1997, Bill Clinton publicly apologized on behalf of the United States for the ethical violations and the damage done in the Tuskegee Study, which had led to federal regulations enacted for the purpose of controlling studies conducted on human beings.