Tuskegee Syphilis Research Paper

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Nneka Taylor

California State University, East Bay

History

In 1932 the Alabama Department of Health, The Tuskegee Institute, white doctors and Macon County agreed to study untreated syphilis. The Alabama Department of Health added the stipulation that some treatment must be provided. During that time the treatment was a combination of neoarsphenamine and mercury. The study subjects who were 400 black men of at least 25 years in age and had the disease for five years or longer. They were to be compared to an Olso study that was done on whites; the initial study was projected to last approximately 6 to 12 months. The study was changed to continue to the study the men until…show more content…
Since there is usually no pain, often times, the person infected with syphilis doesn’t even know and the chancre will disappear, approximately thirty to forty days later (Gray, 2002). The second stage starts approximately one week after the chancre sore disappears and may last for several weeks. There are also a few infected people who have none or mild symptoms of a rash, hair loss or headaches. Open ulcers during this stage are highly infectious to other people (Gray, 2002). The third stage, or late stage, of this disease is when the syphilis bacteria starts to attack the neurological and cardiovascular system in your body, causing damage to the heart, spinal cord, and brain. It’s not limited to that part of the body, it may also affect bones, skin, other organs in the body, cause heart failure which can result in death or a person may develop a mental illness (Gray, 2002).

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study turned out to be the most ruthless and heinous experiment in history. The black men chosen for the study were vulnerable in the sense that they were uneducated, poor, without medical insurance and did farming and sharecropping for their professions and for that reason they were deceived and used. When penicillin became widely available in 1947 and was used to treat syphilis the men that were infected were left untreated and instead they were left to suffer with the illness as though they were not human…show more content…
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