Tuskegee Syphilis Study
- Year(s) Conducted: 1932 to 1972
- Nation Involved: The United States of America
Possibly the worst thing we ever did to our own people outside of slavery & war has to be the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. For this study, which began in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service began working with the Tuskegee Institute. They wanted to try to find a way to curb the effects of Syphilis. Yet they also wanted to track the progression of the disease to better understand it too. To do this, they went to Macon County, Alabama, and decided to pick 600 poor, illiterate, black male sharecroppers. 399 of them had previously contracted syphilis. However, they did not know they had it.