50 Years After Tuskegee, How Is the Race Gap in Health Care Getting Worse?
By David Himmelstein, Susan M. Reverby, and Steffie Woolhandler
Fifty years ago today (July 25), the Associated Press pulled the curtain back on the infamous Tuskegee Study.
U.S. Public Health Service doctors had been withholding treatment from hundreds of Black men with syphilis for 40 years. Worse, the doctors, who wanted to study the consequences of untreated syphilis, lied to their patients— telling them they had “bad blood” (a colloquial term often used to describe anemia, fatigue, and other conditions), and administering vitamins, iron tonics, diagnostic spinal taps and other fake “treatments.” The researchers tried, sometimes unsuccessfully, to keep the study’s subjects from receiving appropriate care over the years.
Read the full story at The Daily Beast.