Light on the Shadow of the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee
Light on the Shadow of the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee
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Publication or External Link
Date
2000
Authors
Thomas, Stephen B.
Quinn, Sandra Crouse
Advisor
Citation
Thomas, Stephen B. and Quinn, Sandra Crouse (2000) Light on the Shadow of the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. Health Promotion Practice, 1 (3). pp. 234-237.
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Abstract
In the 1940s, with the disclosure that Nazi doctors had conducted experiments on humans, the term research crime appeared for the first time. Most Americans believed such abuses could never happen here. On a hot day in July 1972, however, the national front-page news described an experiment sponsored by the U.S. government. In Macon County, Alabama, a large group of Black men had gone untreated for syphilis. Over 4 decades, as some of them died, the U.S. government went to great lengths to ensure that the men in the Tuskegee Study were denied treatment, even after penicillin had become the standard of care in the mid-1940s