Ethics in Research
Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a clinical study that has become a model for racist and unethical
medical experimentation. From 1932 to 1972 it went on involving hundreds of poor and
uneducated Black men diagnosed with dormant syphilis; they had the infection but showed no
symptoms at that stage. For 40 years they were never told they had syphilis and needed penicillin
for treatment. Bad blood is what the men were told they had. The premise of the study was to see
whether syphilis affected black men differently from white men. As payment, the men got free
rides to and from the clinic at Tuskegee University (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
2018).
Likewise, they were fed and given free medical treatment for other conditions. They were
given counterfeit medicine to treat their “Bad Blood”. When 250 of the men were enlisted in
