[Intro Music]
Hey listeners. Welcome back to Beyond the Unknown. I’m your host Joli, and I’m Quinn, and today, we’re diving deep into a horrific tale of human experiments conducted to advance modern medicine but with a cost. This is the story of the Tuskegee study.
[Transition Music]
Joli: The story I’m covering today is so horrible that it could have been ripped from the pages of a dystopian novel.
What if I told you that this tale isn't a work of fiction, but a dark chapter in American history? Picture this: a government-funded study that lasted for decades, hidden in the shadows of medical ethics. It all started when a group of African American men in rural Alabama were unwittingly enrolled in a study promising free healthcare. Little did they know, they were being used as mere subjects in a twisted experiment. Welcome to the chilling reality of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
Quinn: Syphilis did you say?
Joli: I sure did.
For those who don’t know or haven’t heard about it since middle school health class, syphilis is a bacteria that is typically sexually transmitted but it could also be passed from mother to baby. If contracted sexually, it usually presents itself as a painless sore called a chancre which appears at the site of infection so typically the genitals or mouth. When syphilis progresses to what’s called secondary syphilis, or the second stage of it’s life, it presents itself like the flu with aches & muscle pain, sore throat, fever, fatigue and swollen lymph nodes. It can also cause hairless and weight loss which is more extreme. If syphilis progresses to latent syphilis, symptoms disappear and syphilis becomes dormant in the body which can remain dormant for years.
If the individual doesn’t receive treatment, syphilis can progress to what’s called tertiary syphilis. This happens to around 30-40% of people who don’t get treatment after the latent stage according to the Mayo clinic. Tertiary syphilis can cause damage to the brain, nerves, eyes, heart, blood vessels, bones, and liver which in time can result in death.
A little fun fact - It’s believed that tertiary syphilis caused Al Capone’s heart to fail which caused his death.
Did you know in 2022 there were over 207,000 reported cases of syphilis in the United States?
These levels are actually at an all time high since the 1950’s. So, listeners, get tested ok?
But remember how I said since the 1950’s?
Syphilis used to be really common way back when. Especially during the early to mid-20th century, syphilis was relatively common in the United States and many other parts of the world.
Syphilis rates tended to be higher in urban areas and among certain populations, such as those with limited access to healthcare or information about sexually transmitted infections.
Estimates from that era suggest that tens of thousands of cases of syphilis were reported annually in the United States. However, many cases likely went unreported or undiagnosed due to factors such as stigma, lack of access to healthcare, and limited understanding of the disease.
But fret not dear listeners, because syphilis is treatable with a single dose of penicillin, an antibiotic that was developed in England in 1943.
However, before this discovery, across the pond in the United States, the U.S. government was working on their own study on syphilis to find a cure. Syphilis was a significant public health concern, and there were gaps in medical knowledge regarding the disease, its symptoms, and its long-term effects. The hope was that by studying the course of syphilis in a controlled environment, researchers would gain insights into the disease's progression and potentially develop better treatments, because at the start of this study, penicillin wasn’t developed.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was initiated by the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) in collaboration with the Tuskegee Institute (now known as Tuskegee University) in 1932. This study was led by Dr. Taliaferro Clark, and the goal was to observe the natural progression of untreated syphilis in African American men in Macon County, Alabama. The study was intended to last 6 months but it went on for years.
The study recruited 600 African American men, 399 of whom had contracted syphilis prior to the study, and 201 who did not have the disease, serving as a control group. These men were predominantly poor sharecroppers, who were unaware of the true nature of the study and were instead told they were receiving free healthcare because they had “bad blood” which was a blanket term used for ailments like syphilis, anemia, and general fatigue.
Despite the availability of effective treatment for syphilis following the introduction of penicillin in the 1940s, the participants were deliberately denied treatment. Instead, they were offered placebos such as aspirin and mineral supplements. Participants couldn’t leave the study even if they wanted to. It was like the Hotel California of medical studies, but they didn’t know this….
In 1943, the Henderson Act was passed in the United States. This act required that the testing and treatment of venereal diseases be publicly funded, and by 1947 penicillin had become the standard way to treat syphilis. But the Tuskegee syphilis study was still blocking patients from treatment.
If a person in the study sought treatment elsewhere, like a local doctor, they would either be denied OR given something that wouldn’t treat syphilis like a placebo. And this was because the researchers of the study shared the list of participants to doctors within Macon County and also the Alabama Health Department and asked them not to treat these people to not interfere with their study…. and the doctors fucking complied!?!?
The same year, the Nuremberg code was written, as a result of the Nuremberg trials post WW2, which required voluntary consent of the human subject. Yet, the Tuskegee study went on because the CDC who took over the experiment from the US Public Health Service wanted to continue with the study.
It wasn’t until 1972, almost 30 years later, that the study was officially eneded. And that’s because of a man named Peter Buxton, a whistleblower, who leaked information about the study to the New York Times and the paper published it on the front page on November 16th, 1972. By the time of the leak, only 74 of the test subjects were still alive. 128 patients had died of syphilis or its complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had acquired congenital syphilis.
Once the details were leaked, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of the participants and their families, resulting in a 10 million dollar out of court settlement.
Which is the equivalent to what, Quinn in today’s money??
70 M
On May 16, 1997, over 20 years after the class action lawsuit, and over 60 years since the study was started, President Bill Clinton formally apologized on behalf of the US for the study, calling it shameful and racist.
So, there you have it…
The legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study continues to resonate today as a stark reminder of the importance of ethical conduct within scientific research and the need to prioritize the well-being and rights of participants, particularly those from marginalized communities. It serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked scientific hubris and the potential for harm when ethical considerations are disregarded in the pursuit of knowledge.
[Outro]
Quinn: Thank you for joining us for another episode of "Beyond the Unknown." If you have a story you’d like to share, please email us at moody.mediaprod@gmail.com. You can reach out on our website, and who knows, your story might be featured in our next episode.
Joli: All of our sources for this episode can be found on our website: beyondtheunknownpod.com.
And don’t forget, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review.
Quinn: Until next time, listeners. Stay curious and remember that the unknown is always just beyond the shadows.
Both: BYEEEE
