The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

Corocotta

Active member
Well,I will give more info that just a link.I am not trying to offend any body here, just to open a civilizate dialogue, it is not post against US


"The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens... clearly racist."
—President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis

Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997

For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,” their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all.

The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”


Using Human Beings as Laboratory Animals

bhm_clark.jpg

Taliaferro Clark, Head of the U.S. Public Health Service at the outset of the experiment.
The true nature of the experiment had to be kept from the subjects to ensure their cooperation. The sharecroppers' grossly disadvantaged lot in life made them easy to manipulate. Pleased at the prospect of free medical care—almost none of them had ever seen a doctor before—these unsophisticated and trusting men became the pawns in what James Jones, author of the excellent history on the subject, Bad Blood, identified as “the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history.”

The study was meant to discover how syphilis affected blacks as opposed to whites—the theory being that whites experienced more neurological complications from syphilis, whereas blacks were more susceptible to cardiovascular damage. How this knowledge would have changed clinical treatment of syphilis is uncertain.

Although the PHS touted the study as one of great scientific merit, from the outset its actual benefits were hazy. It took almost forty years before someone involved in the study took a hard and honest look at the end results, reporting that “nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States.”

When the experiment was brought to the attention of the media in 1972, news anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that “used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone.”


A Heavy Price in the Name of Bad Science

To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of promotional hype: “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment.”
The fact that autopsies would eventually be required was also concealed.

By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis. How had these men been induced to endure a fatal disease in the name of science?

To persuade the community to support the experiment, one of the original doctors admitted it “was necessary to carry on this study under the guise of a demonstration and provide treatment.” At first, the men were prescribed the syphilis remedies of the day—bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury— but in such small amounts that only 3 percent showed any improvement.

These token doses of medicine were good public relations and did not interfere with the true aims of the study. Eventually, all syphilis treatment was replaced with “pink medicine”—aspirin.

To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of promotional hype: “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment.” The fact that autopsies would eventually be required was also concealed.

As a doctor explained, “If the colored population becomes aware that accepting free hospital care means a post-mortem, every darky will leave Macon County...” Even the Surgeon General of the United States participated in enticing the men to remain in the experiment, sending them certificates of appreciation after 25 years in the study.


Following Doctors' Orders


It takes little imagination to ascribe racist attitudes to the white government officials who ran the experiment, but what can one make of the numerous African Americans who collaborated with them? The experiment's name comes from the Tuskegee Institute, the black university founded by Booker T. Washington. Its affiliated hospital lent the PHS its medical facilities for the study, and other predominantly black institutions as well as local black doctors also participated. A black nurse, Eunice Rivers, was a central figure in the experiment for most of its forty years.

bhm_va.jpg

The Veterans' Administration Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama. Some of the study's post-mortem exams were conducted here.


The promise of recognition by a prestigious government agency may have obscured the troubling aspects of the study for some. A Tuskegee doctor, for example, praised “the educational advantages offered our interns and nurses as well as the added standing it will give the hospital.” Nurse Rivers explained her role as one of passive obedience: “we were taught that we never diagnosed, we never prescribed; we followed the doctor's instructions!”

It is clear that the men in the experiment trusted her and that she sincerely cared about their well-being, but her unquestioning submission to authority eclipsed her moral judgment. Even after the experiment was exposed to public scrutiny, she genuinely felt nothing ethical had been amiss.

One of the most chilling aspects of the experiment was how zealously the PHS kept these men from receiving treatment. When several nationwide campaigns to eradicate venereal disease came to Macon County, the men were prevented from participating. Even when penicillin—the first real cure for syphilis—was discovered in the 1940s, the Tuskegee men were deliberately denied the medication.

During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have the PHS exempt them. Pleased at their success, the PHS representative announced: “So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment.” The experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943), a public health law requiring testing and treatment for venereal disease, and in spite of the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which specified that “informed consent” was needed for experiments involving human beings.


Blowing the Whistle

The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the experiments performed by Nazi doctors on Jewish victims during World War II. Yet the PHS offered the same defense offered at the Nuremberg trials — they were just carrying out orders.
The story finally broke in the Washington Star on July 25, 1972, in an article by Jean Heller of the Associated Press. Her source was Peter Buxtun, a former PHS venereal disease interviewer and one of the few whistle blowers over the years. The PHS, however, remained unrepentant, claiming the men had been “volunteers” and “were always happy to see the doctors,” and an Alabama state health officer who had been involved claimed “somebody is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.”

Under the glare of publicity, the government ended their experiment, and for the first time provided the men with effective medical treatment for syphilis. Fred Gray, a lawyer who had previously defended Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, filed a class action suit that provided a $10 million out-of-court settlement for the men and their families. Gray, however, named only whites and white organizations as defendants in the suit, portraying Tuskegee as a black and white case when it was in fact more complex than that—black doctors and institutions had been involved from beginning to end.

The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the appalling experiments performed by Nazi doctors on their Jewish victims during World War II. Yet in addition to the medical and racist parallels, the PHS offered the same morally bankrupt defense offered at the Nuremberg trials: they claimed they were just carrying out orders, mere cogs in the wheel of the PHS bureaucracy, exempt from personal responsibility.

The study's other justification—for the greater good of science—is equally spurious. Scientific protocol had been shoddy from the start. Since the men had in fact received some medication for syphilis in the beginning of the study, however inadequate, it thereby corrupted the outcome of a study of “untreated syphilis.”


The Legacy of Tuskegee

Related Links:
Black History Month Features

U.S. Public Health Service

Tuskegee National Historic Site

Tuskegee University (formerly the Tuskegee Institute)

Internet Resources on the Tuskegee Study

Clinton's Apology for the Experiment

In 1990, a survey found that 10 percent of African Americans believed that the U.S. government created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks, and another 20 percent could not rule out the possibility that this might be true. As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched.

Who could imagine the government, all the way up to the Surgeon General of the United States, deliberately allowing a group of its citizens to die from a terrible disease for the sake of an ill-conceived experiment? In light of this and many other shameful episodes in our history, African Americans' widespread mistrust of the government and white society in general should not be a surprise to anyone.

1. All quotations from Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, James H. Jones, expanded edition (New York: Free Press, 1993).


I repeat, i just want to open a civilizated dialogue.
 
And copy and paste is not the way to do it.

Post YOUR opinion and YOUR stance on the subject, I can click and read, and most others here can as well, so taking up four pages with the words of others accomplishes nothing. Your next topic will remedy this problem or it will be immediately locked, you know what you are doing wrong and there is no point to giving you any more slack on the issue.
 
There is too much speculation and controversy in this as it is a highly sensitive topic.

No comment on this in order to prevent any verbal offenses.
 
Redneck said:
And copy and paste is not the way to do it.

Post YOUR opinion and YOUR stance on the subject, I can click and read, and most others here can as well, so taking up four pages with the words of others accomplishes nothing. Your next topic will remedy this problem or it will be immediately locked, you know what you are doing wrong and there is no point to giving you any more slack on the issue.

Well, I was reading something about Menguele(the nazi doctor) and there were comments to this experiment. I was really surprised when i read it and I thought that may be somebody here will be interested in reading it, but as I see is really dificult for you to recognise any error that US administration has done in the past. I could have made a resume of it insted of copy&paste, but I would have lost some importat info. Reading more I founded that this was not the only experiment of this kind: human radiation: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...riment+with+human+beings,+US+radiation&hl=en; http://ishgooda.org/nuclear/nuke27.htm

I was horrified when I also finded this, I hope some body will give me arguments telling me that all this is a bunch of crap:

1935 - The Pellagra Incident. After millions of individuals die from Pellagra over a span of two decades, the U.S. Public Health Service finally acts to stem the disease. The director of the agency admits it had known for at least 20 years that Pellagra is caused by a niacin deficiency but failed to act since most of the deaths occured within poverty-striken black populations.

1940 - Four hundred prisoners in Chicago are infected with Malaria in order to study the effects of new and experimental drugs to combat the disease. Nazi doctors later on trial at Nuremberg cite this American study to defend their own actions during the Holocaust.

1942 - Chemical Warfare Services begins mustard gas experiments on approximately 4,000 servicemen. The experiments continue until 1945 and made use of Seventh Day Adventists who chose to become human guinea pigs rather than serve on active duty.

1943 - In response to Japan's full-scale germ warfare program, the U.S. begins research on biological weapons at Fort Detrick, MD.

1944 - U.S. Navy uses human subjects to test gas masks and clothing. Individuals were locked in a gas chamber and exposed to mustard gas and lewisite.

1945 - Project Paperclip is initiated. The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence, and the CIA recruit Nazi scientists and offer them immunity and secret identities in exchange for work on top secret government projects in the United States.

1945 - "Program F" is implemented by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). This is the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoride, which was the key chemical component in atomic bomb production. One of the most toxic chemicals known to man, fluoride, it is found, causes marked adverse effects to the central nervous system but much of the information is squelched in the name of national security because of fear that lawsuits would undermine full-scale production of atomic bombs.

1946 - Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to change the word "experiments" to "investigations" or "observations" whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation's veteran's hospitals.

1947 - Colonel E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Comission issues a secret document (Document 07075001, January 8, 1947) stating that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects.

1947 - The CIA begins its study of LSD as a potential weapon for use by American intelligence. Human subjects (both civilian and military) are used with and without their knowledge.

1950 - Department of Defense begins plans to detonate nuclear weapons in desert areas and monitor downwind residents for medical problems and mortality rates.

1950 - I n an experiment to determine how susceptible an American city would be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Franciso. Monitoring devices are situated throughout the city in order to test the extent of infection. Many residents become ill with pneumonia-like symptoms.

1951 - Department of Defense begins open air tests using disease-producing bacteria and viruses. Tests last through 1969 and there is concern that people in the surrounding areas have been exposed.

1953 - U.S. military releases clouds of zinc cadmium sulfide gas over Winnipeg, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley in Maryland, and Leesburg, Virginia. Their intent is to determine how efficiently they could disperse chemical agents.

1953 - Joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments are conducted in which tens of thousands of people in New York and San Francisco are exposed to the airborne germs Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii.

1953 - CIA initiates Project MKULTRA. This is an eleven year research program designed to produce and test drugs and biological agents that would be used for mind control and behavior modification. Six of the subprojects involved testing the agents on unwitting human beings.

1955 - The CIA, in an experiment to test its ability to infect human populations with biological agents, releases a bacteria withdrawn from the Army's biological warfare arsenal over Tampa Bay, Fl.

1955 - Army Chemical Corps continues LSD research, studying its potential use as a chemical incapacitating agent. More than 1,000 Americans participate in the tests, which continue until 1958.

1956 - U.S. military releases mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Ga and Avon Park, Fl. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials test victims for effects.

1958 - LSD is tested on 95 volunteers at the Army's Chemical Warfare Laboratories for its effect on intelligence.

1960 - The Army Assistant Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) authorizes field testing of LSD in Europe and the Far East. Testing of the european population is code named Project THIRD CHANCE; testing of the Asian population is code named Project DERBY HAT.

1965 - Project CIA and Department of Defense begin Project MKSEARCH, a program to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior through the use of mind-altering drugs.

1965 - Prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia are subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical component of Agent Orange used in Viet Nam. The men are later studied for development of cancer, which indicates that Agent Orange had been a suspected carcinogen all along.

1966 - CIA initiates Project MKOFTEN, a program to test the toxicological effects of certain drugs on humans and animals.

1966 - U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.

1967 - CIA and Department of Defense implement Project MKNAOMI, successor to MKULTRA and designed to maintain, stockpile and test biological and chemical weapons.

1968 - CIA experiments with the possibility of poisoning drinking water by injecting chemicals into the water supply of the FDA in Washington, D.C.

1969 - Dr. Robert MacMahan of the Department of Defense requests from congress $10 million to develop, within 5 to 10 years, a synthetic biological agent to which no natural immunity exists.

1970 - Funding for the synthetic biological agent is obtained under H.R. 15090. The project, under the supervision of the CIA, is carried out by the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, the army's top secret biological weapons facility. Speculation is raised that molecular biology techniques are used to produce AIDS-like retroviruses.

1970 - United States intensifies its development of "ethnic weapons" (Military Review, Nov., 1970), designed to selectively target and eliminate specific ethnic groups who are susceptible due to genetic differences and variations in DNA.

1975 - The virus section of Fort Detrick's Center for Biological Warfare Research is renamed the Fredrick Cancer Research Facilities and placed under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) . It is here that a special virus cancer program is initiated by the U.S. Navy, purportedly to develop cancer-causing viruses. It is also here that retrovirologists isolate a virus to which no immunity exists. It is later named HTLV (Human T-cell Leukemia Virus).

1977 - Senate hearings on Health and Scientific Research confirm that 239 populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969. Some of the areas included San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Key West, Panama City, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.

1978 - Experimental Hepatitis B vaccine trials, conducted by the CDC, begin in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.

I hope this will open a dialogue and won´t get locked inmidiatly as it usually happens with all my posts...
 
I'm afraid you have a mixture of medical radiation treatment for cancer, harmless defense testing which was blown out of proportion by anti-American groups, and utter bullshit. No one has ever explored eradication of minorities in the USA, that idea borders on insanity. Facts don't lie but liars twist facts to back their agenda.
 
And he's still the master of copy & paste. Still posting without evidence to back up his copying and pasting as well.
 
Missileer said:
I'm afraid you have a mixture of medical radiation treatment for cancer, harmless defense testing which was blown out of proportion by anti-American groups, and utter bullsh*t. No one has ever explored eradication of minorities in the USA, that idea borders on insanity. Facts don't lie but liars twist facts to back their agenda.

I think that you did not read carefully, go to page 13 of this link, I know is a lot, but make an effort!!!!!

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...riment+with+human+beings,+US+radiation&hl=en;

It is a document of the department of defense, i think it has a lot of credibility. Please answer with arguments.....I know it is hard to recognised that your country have been doing experiments with humans, just like Mengele, but is a fact!!!!
 
Hmmmm! So the choice of the most believable source is Stauroflake or the USA. :roll: I pick the USA and always will.
 
well, my sources are coming from your country!!! :roll: I do not invent the info. The problem is that you can not see the mistakes of your goverment, and that is sad.
 
Actually I was stating that _you_ have no arguments. You're just copying and pasting somebody else's words. You aren't making any argument of your own. Come up with something cohesive, have so verifiable facts to go along with your statements and then we can have have a discussion.
 
Charge_7 said:
Actually I was stating that _you_ have no arguments. You're just copying and pasting somebody else's words. You aren't making any argument of your own. Come up with something cohesive, have so verifiable facts to go along with your statements and then we can have have a discussion.


Exactly. (see my post above)

And believe me, nobody could be more aware of the capacity of their government (from ANY country) to commit mistakes than someone who has served in that nation's military for an extended period of time (as in more than a day :lol: ), as Missileer and Charge_7 and many others here have.
 
Charge_7 said:
Actually I was stating that _you_ have no arguments. You're just copying and pasting somebody else's words. You aren't making any argument of your own. Come up with something cohesive, have so verifiable facts to go along with your statements and then we can have have a discussion.

Well, my opinion is that your Goverment many time have showed that he doesn´t care of their citizens and that they just do everything, even using humans like animals. The ones that no have arguments are you guys, the only thing you say is that my info is not correct, the right thing will be giving me some info that will make me see that I am wrong.
What do you want me to make a resume of the articles i read?

This is an argument:a set of statements in which one follows logically as a conclusion from the others. I think my posts followed this rule, yours did not
 
staurofilakes said:
Charge_7 said:
Actually I was stating that _you_ have no arguments. You're just copying and pasting somebody else's words. You aren't making any argument of your own. Come up with something cohesive, have so verifiable facts to go along with your statements and then we can have have a discussion.

Well, my opinion is that your Goverment many time have showed that he doesn´t care of their citizens and that they just do everything, even using humans like animals. The ones that no have arguments are you guys, the only thing you say is that my info is not correct, the right thing will be giving me some info that will make me see that I am wrong.
What do you want me to make a resume of the articles i read?

This is an argument:a set of statements in which one follows logically as a conclusion from the others. I think my posts followed this rule, yours did not

First, you open with saying that you have nothing against America and then you compare us with NAZI Germany. How in God's name can you expect us to agree with the vitriolic, hate filled statements you make about our country. No one on this forum has gotten away with such blatant disregard of country bashing rules. First, I refuse to defend all of the cut-n-paste trash you can find on the internet, true or not. Our Government you speak of as evil is actually us, the people. There are good and bad times in our history but you refuse to post anything positive, only negative. It would take an idiot not to be able to read your deep hatred of the United States of America. Therefore, I will not respond any longer to your posts as they are all the same. If you are in the US, you are free to leave, if you are not here, you are free not to come here.
 
Missileer said:
staurofilakes said:
Charge_7 said:
Actually I was stating that _you_ have no arguments. You're just copying and pasting somebody else's words. You aren't making any argument of your own. Come up with something cohesive, have so verifiable facts to go along with your statements and then we can have have a discussion.

Well, my opinion is that your Goverment many time have showed that he doesn´t care of their citizens and that they just do everything, even using humans like animals. The ones that no have arguments are you guys, the only thing you say is that my info is not correct, the right thing will be giving me some info that will make me see that I am wrong.
What do you want me to make a resume of the articles i read?

This is an argument:a set of statements in which one follows logically as a conclusion from the others. I think my posts followed this rule, yours did not

First, you open with saying that you have nothing against America and then you compare us with NAZI Germany. How in God's name can you expect us to agree with the vitriolic, hate filled statements you make about our country. No one on this forum has gotten away with such blatant disregard of country bashing rules. First, I refuse to defend all of the cut-n-paste trash you can find on the internet, true or not. Our Government you speak of as evil is actually us, the people. There are good and bad times in our history but you refuse to post anything positive, only negative. It would take an idiot not to be able to read your deep hatred of the United States of America. Therefore, I will not respond any longer to your posts as they are all the same. If you are in the US, you are free to leave, if you are not here, you are free not to come here.

I did not make such a comparation, I said that I was reading something about Mengele and they talked about this experiment.Read my post again.
As I see you still have no arguments, why do you keep answering then? Your only arguement is that my arguements is copied and pasted...strong arguement! Please check the info I posted and try to find something solid that denies it. My english is not very good so copy and paste sometimes is very helpful, I could read & resume, but I am really busy and do not have many time.
I am not in US and I am not gonna go, I enjoy other destinations, but by the way, are you the Secretary of Inmigration??
 
"Your only arguement is that my arguements is copied and pasted...strong arguement!"

If you copy and paste somebody else's words then it isn't your arguement.

It's their arguement.
 
staurofilakes said:
[ but I am really busy and do not have many time.

Then feel free to spend what little time is available to you NOT cluttering this forum with your cookie cutter "arguments." If you are not willing to spend the time putting your own thoughts and words in your posts, I will be very happy to delete or lock every one of them. You have been warned many times to correct this, and no further warnings will be given.
 
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