Video: 'The Tuskegee Study'

(Tuesday, July 25, 1972; during the Tuskegee Syphilis Study) — The notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment came to light today as The Associated Press reported that for the previous four decades, the U.S. Public Health Service, in conjunction with the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, had been allowing poor, rural Black male patients with syphilis to go without treatment, even allowing them to die, as a way of studying the disease.

The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of the disease when untreated, though by the end of the study medical advancements meant it was entirely treatable. The nearly 400 African American men were not informed of the nature of the experiment, and more than 100 died as a result.

Video: 'The Dark side of Science: The horror of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (Short Documentary)'

As a result of public outcry, the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) appointed an ad hoc advisory panel to review the study. The panel found that the men agreed to certain terms of the experiment, such as examination and treatment. However, they were not informed of the study’s actual purpose. The panel then determined that the study was medically unjustified and ordered its termination.

In 1974, as part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed by the NAACP on behalf of study participants and their descendants, the U.S. government paid $10 million ($51.8 million in 2019) and agreed to provide free medical treatment to surviving participants and surviving family members infected as a consequence of the study. Congress created a commission empowered to write regulations to deter such abuses from occurring in the future