The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, was a notorious clinical study that

has become a byword for racist and unethical medical experimentation. It ran from 1932 to 1972 and
involved nearly 400 impoverished and poorly educated African-American men diagnosed with latent
syphilis - meaning that they had the infection but showed no obvious symptoms at that stage. For 40 years
they were never told they had syphilis and were never treated for it, even when penicillin became a
standard cure in 1947. They were simply told they had ‘bad blood’. Among the aims of the study was to
see whether syphilis affected black men differently from white men.

The first major ethical principle that was violated was THE RIGHT TO FULL DISCLOSURE, which
refers to telling potential research participants about all aspects of the research that might reasonably
influence their decision to participate. Another concern has to do with the possibility that a person might
feel pressured to agree or might not understand precisely what he or she is agreeing to. The investigators
took advantage of a deprived socioeconomic situation in which the participants had experienced low
levels of care.

The second major ethical principle that was violated was THE RIGHT TO SELF DETERMINATION, it
means that the person that people have the right to ask questions, to refuse to give information and to
withdraw from the study. The advisory panel found nothing to show that subjects were ever given the
choice of quitting the study, even when this new, highly effective treatment became widely used. The
USPHS practiced deception in recruiting subjects for the study. It was never explained to the subjects that
the survey was designed to detect syphilis. The term “bad blood,” which was a local colloquialism for
everything from anemia to leukemia, was used by the doctors and never defined for the subjects. Subjects
were never told they had syphilis, the course of the disease, or treatment. The treatment presented
consisted of spinal taps, which were described as “spinal shots”.

The third ethical principle that was violated was THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM FROM HARM AMD
DISCOMFORT. Participants must not be subjected to unnecessary risk of harm or discomfort and their
participation must be essential to achieving scientifically and societally important aims. Even when
penicillin became the drug of choice for syphilis in 1947, researchers did not offer it to the subjects.