Effects of syphilis:
It is a painful infection, in which progressively deeper layers of tissue are infected and eventually destroyed. This necrotic state can effect tissues such as the skin, eyes, heart, brain, and bones.
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was conducted between 1932 and 1972. 399 poor African-American sharecroppers where found who had contracted syphilis. A medical board reviewed and fallowed them throughout their agonizing lives. Even after 1947 when penicillin was found to cure syphilis, the participants of the study where keep in the dark about the fact. They were just allowed to languish in the savage destruction of their bodies and lives. Wives were infected and children where born with congenital syphilis, causing disturbing birth defects.
Who was behind this devilish experiment?
Well it was your very own Uncle Sam. Working through the U.S. Public Health Service.
This was a joint effort with the Arkansas regional PHS (Public Health Service) office and the John Andrew Hospital at the Tuskegee Institute (Dr. Eugene Dibble, an African American doctor, was the head physician at the hospital).
In 1966 Peter Buxtun, a PHS venereal-disease investigator in San Francisco, after failed attempts to bring about a resolution to this fiendish experiment, finally went to the press in the early 1970s. It became front-page news in the New York Times the following day. Senator Edward Kennedy called Congressional hearings to investigate. As part of a settlement of a class action lawsuit subsequently filed by the NAACP, the U.S. government paid nine million and agreed to provide free medical treatment to surviving participants, as well as to surviving family members infected as a consequence of the study. Public health laws where passed to help prevent such horrors from happening again.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study significantly damaged the trust of the black community toward public health efforts in the United States. Which I believe will take a long full hearty effort on the part of government to undo.
