1932

Initiation of Tuskegee syphilis study (halted only in 1972) by U.S. Public Health Service (Gould, 84). Point of study was to observe progress of untreated syphilis in black sharecroppers in Macon Country, AL. Among the multiple deceptions perpetrated on the sharecroppers: (1) insisting that they were being treated, not merely observed. “Treatment” consisted of aspirin, iron tonic, and vitamins delivered in Nurse Eunice Rivers’ house calls; (2) withholding study requirement of post-mortems by making sure they died under care of Eugene Dibble, African American directory of Tuskegee Hospital, who was given a PHS appt; (3) never letting study participants know Nurse Rivers was hired to track their movement and report on their deaths; (3) promise participants free burial, funded by Milbank Fund: “But this reassurance was illusory, because the chief reasons they feared indigent burial was their fear of being autopsied first – and this as to their precise medical fate” (Montgomery, 232).’ (4) keeping study participants out of WWII draft “because the PHS feared that they would be treated for syphilis in the military” (233). (5) keeping study participants away from penicillin, which became available in 1943, later putting “fictious spin” on number of those who had received adequate treatment, while reiterating the fiction that blacks did not want or see real medical care. As it turned out, 7.5% of infected study participants managed to obtain “an effective degree of treatment” (233).