The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment was conducted by the US government, beginning in 1932 in Tuskegee, a rural town in Alabama where nearly 600 African American men had their syphilis diagnosis hidden from them. By allowing the disease to run its course, those conducting the experiment hoped to observe the effects of syphilis on the human body. In 1947, when it was discovered that penicillin was an effective cure for syphilis, the men were still not informed and were not offered treatment. After the experiment was ended and condemned, the men subjected to it each received an out of court settlement of $37,500, and the families of deceased victims of the experiment were given $15,000. At least 128 of the men who were experimented on died directly from syphilis or from complications related to syphilis. The families of some of the men involved also unknowingly contracted syphilis, causing issues with fertility in women, who have an increased chance of miscarriage if their syphilis is not treated. The experiment was ended in 1972 after several articles were published exposing the malpractice, causing an ad hoc panel to look into the case, which they deemed “ethically unjustified,” reporting that the “results were disproportionately meager compared with known risks to human subjects involved” (https://biotech.law.lsu.edu). While directly impacting the physical health of the people of Tuskegee, the experiment has had more long term, widespread effects. A study by Marcella Alsan and Marianne Wanamaker explores the impact the experiment had on the relationship between black culture and the healthcare industry, finding that “men who were more similar to Tuskegee’s uneducated, poor, medically underserved population were more likely to suffer diminished outcomes; and migrants from Alabama in the wake of Tuskegee were very likely to carry with them these diminished outcomes” (Newkirk, 2016). The study also found the experiment to be “responsible for over a third of the life expectancy gap between older black men and white men in 1980.”  Those who lived in close proximity to Tuskegee and those who identified with the victims of the experiment were more likely to have negative experiences in healthcare settings and were less likely to trust doctors or the medical system as a whole. This decrease in trust was reinforced by a racial disparities embedded into every level of the medical system, which limited access to care and quality of care to black people, especially black women, underscored by historic dehumanization of black people and the belief that they didn’t feel pain in the same way that white people did. While material impacts like access and quality of healthcare clearly highlight racial disparities, this study shows how experiences of racism embed themselves historically. The distrust sewn by the experiment combined with the impacts on sexual and reproductive health have played a role in shaping how black patients interact with doctors, further limiting their access to quality care.

sources:

https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cphl/history/reports/tuskegee/complete%20rep...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/tuskegee-study-medi...