U.S. Public Health Service Begins Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

In July 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service began a study in Macon County, Alabama enrolling 399 Black men with latent syphilis and 201 controls. Subjects were told they were being treated for 'bad blood' but were deliberately given placebos while researchers observed the disease's natural progression. When penicillin became standard treatment in 1947, it was withheld from participants. The study ran until a whistleblower exposed it in 1972. At least 28 men died directly of syphilis; 100 died of related complications; 40 wives were infected; 19 children were born with congenital syphilis.