WEBVTT - The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:07.160 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.600 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.200 Chuck and this is Stuff you should Know about one 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:21.439 of the more shameful chapters in US history and indeed 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:23.400 medical history. I think you could say too. 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.720 Yeah, for sure. And by the way, if you hear 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:32.240 weird noises, my immediate neighborhood is sort of crazy right now. 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:33.159 What's going on? 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:38.360 Well, I've got construction next door, I've got a lawn 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.280 crew across the street, and they're also shooting a movie 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:44.680 across the street. So it's just pandemonium is happening outside 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:46.400 these sort of quiet doors. 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:49.520 You know what. I would call that shameful. 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:52.320 Not like this no episode, for sure. 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:53.720 That was my attempt at segaway. 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:55.400 Yeah, nice work. 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:57.040 I don't know about that, but thanks. 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:00.440 By the way, this one is a listener recommended and 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:03.320 a teenage listener. This came from Miles Kendrick, a fourteen 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:03.760 year old. 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:05.479 Nice Miles, great idea. 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:06.520 Yeah, thanks for that. 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.759 Yeah, we're talking about what's called the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:17.600 or Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and the actual official name for 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:21.640 it was the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:22.440 Negro Male. 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:24.959 Yeah, that spells it all out, doesn't it. 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.440 It does. The fact that there's an official title for 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:29.600 this just really kind of goes to show you just 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:32.679 how nefarius the whole thing was. And it was indeed 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:37.640 a nefarious experiment, no matter. It doesn't really matter how 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:40.479 you slice it. You can look at it any number 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:43.280 of ways and it always still washes out stinky. 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:47.080 Yeah, it does. And this was an experiment. I mean, 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:49.280 I guess we'll go ahead and say what happened generally 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:55.280 is that they recruited black men in Macon County, Alabama 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.920 that had syphilis. Kind of one of the misconceptions is 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.559 that they were given syphilis as part of this. Not true, 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:04.960 but don't worry. We did that in Guatemala, as we'll 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.840 see later on. Yeah, and sign them up for this 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.400 study where they would not treat these men of syphilis 0:02:11.400 --> 0:02:15.040 just to see how it progressed, basically because they had 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:18.680 this notion and you know, of course just doesn't excuse anything. 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:20.960 But one of the supposed reasons that they had this 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.840 notion that syphilis would was different in white men than 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:27.959 black men, and that in black men, it was more 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.880 cardiovascular based as far as the symptoms and the results, 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.840 and then in white men it was more neurological. And 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:37.000 it was initially supposed to be a six month thing, 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:41.040 but it went on not for four years, not for 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:44.080 fourteen years, but for forty years. 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.399 Yeah. I mean it started out in nineteen thirty two 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:51.400 in the Jim Crow South and it carried right through 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:55.680 the entire Civil Rights era. A number of other historical 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:58.120 things happened during this time that should have given the 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:02.520 researchers pause. From what I saw, the best explanation is 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:06.080 not that these people were inherently evil, although you can 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:07.760 make a case that at least one of the people 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:09.840 who led the study at one point was we'll talk 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:13.880 about him later in Guatemala, But more that they just 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:17.239 came to see these these men, these individuals, these human beings, 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.400 there's nothing more than a data set, and that they 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:24.920 stripped them of their humanity so thoroughly that they didn't 0:03:24.960 --> 0:03:28.360 even really think that this was there was anything wrong 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:30.480 with what they were doing, even over the course of 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:31.640 forty whole years. 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.240 Yeah. And the reason why they chose Macon County is 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:38.520 a few reasons. One, it's proximity to Tuskegee, which was 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:40.440 you know, key is the place where they carried this 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:45.080 stuff out and others because they they zoned in on 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:49.040 that area because they initially were trying to find out 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.600 how many people had syphilis and where so they could 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:55.040 treat these men, right, and they found that Macon County, 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:58.680 Alabama had the highest prevalence of syphilis. And also in 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.880 this last art comes from the files that were released 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:06.200 and collected I think in the last decade. Even they 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:09.400 were sharecroppers, there were rural men, and they were poor men. 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:11.760 And the quote that was in these papers that I 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:14.360 found was that they found them immobile and malleable. 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.640 Yeah, they were an extremely vulnerable population. I mean even 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:22.800 among the black population at large in the Jim Crow era, 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:27.000 these were like the most vulnerable people and they had 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:30.880 less rights than even other black people at the time 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:34.560 in America. So yeah, they picked on them very specifically. 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:38.080 And that you kind of hinted at something that I 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:41.120 find as one of the most cynical aspects of this 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:45.360 whole thing, that initially the program that was working down 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:50.240 there was a well funded program that was treating syphilis, 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:52.960 and then the funding ran out of that and they said, well, 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.320 we still have all these people that we know have syphilis. 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.279 Let's try something different and not treat them. And that 0:04:58.440 --> 0:04:59.920 was the beginning of the whole thing. 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:02.600 Yeah, And it's also key to point out before we 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.720 get into the grizzly details, is that these men did 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.280 not know they had syphilis, and then they also thought 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:11.440 that they were being treated. They were told they had 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.120 quote bad blood, and the whole time they thought they 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:17.480 were getting treatment when they were getting placebos. 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:21.320 Right. Yeah. And then there were I read a couple 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:24.960 of men who suspected or knew they had syphilis and 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:27.440 wanted to go get it treated, and the people running 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.280 the study prevented them from getting it treated, either by 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:33.640 telling them not to go do that or by telling 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:35.920 doctors in the area, do not treat any of these 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:38.080 men because they're part of the study we're carrying out. 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:40.320 Because that's another thing too. I think a lot of 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.680 people think that this was some secret government study conducted 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:47.600 in absolute silence. It was not at all. It wasn't 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:49.960 even an open secret. It wasn't a secret at all, 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:53.320 so much so that the people running the study published 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:58.080 thirteen different journal articles over the course of that forty 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:02.839 years and put out annual reports, published annual reports on 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.640 the progress of this thing. So it was just right 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.600 out there, and people just overlooked it or ignored it 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:11.360 for four decades. Yeah. 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:13.760 It was a time when you know, the medical community 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:16.359 certainly was aware, but the public at large and the 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:19.800 media didn't really look into you know, medical papers and 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:20.600 stuff like they. 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:21.200 Do these days. 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:24.359 Yeah, And we should point out that all of this 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:29.400 was done despite a nineteen twenty seven statute in the 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:33.360 state of Alabama that requires treatment of syphilis, Like it 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:37.120 was a state law that they just rushed aside, basically, 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:41.160 And all of this done for the promise of hot meals, 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:46.200 treatment and burial insurance basically. 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:51.880 Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I mean, I think that's 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:53.560 a pretty good setup. I think we should kind of 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:56.279 describe what these men were suffering from, yeah, in the 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:58.359 first place, and talk a little bit about syphilis. 0:06:59.080 --> 0:06:59.440 Let's do. 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:04.400 It was caused by a bacterium called its spiral shaped 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:09.400 and it's called the Treponema palladum bacterium. And they don't 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:11.360 know where it came from, but they know that it 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:14.320 dates at least all the way back to Naples in 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:17.880 fourteen ninety five when mercenaries serving in the French Army 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.840 got syphilis and then very quickly spread it far and wide, 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:26.280 because for eight years later it was in India and China. 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:28.040 That's pretty fast, man. 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:28.560 Yeah. 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:31.120 One of the reasons it was so fast is because 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:37.560 these were armies pillaging and raping, and syphilis is primarily 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:41.600 transmitted through sexual contact. It can also be transmitted or 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:45.960 transferred from an infected woman to her fetus, but for 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.480 the most part it comes from unprotected sex to this 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:53.720 std Yeah, and there's a there's a hypothesis that it 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.960 came back with Columbus and his men, who were again 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:00.840 pillaging and raping, and they had contracted what is considered 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.760 a new world disease, syphilis, and brought it back to Europe, 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:07.440 and that's where it spread. Apparently, there's no actual hard 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.480 evidence of this or hard proof, but the timing, I 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:13.400 think is what people zero in on. I mean, it 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:17.000 first popped up in fourteen ninety five, and everyone knows 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:22.040 thanks to that child prodigy whose name escapes me right now, Stoner. 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:25.920 I think her last name is Stoner Sackler. The Columbus 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:27.920 sailed the Ocean Blue in fourteen ninety. 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:31.280 Two, that's right, and if you got syphilis, you were 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.800 in for a pretty rough run, including possibly eventually death 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:37.160 in a lot of cases. If you were an infant, 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.679 it could be certainly fatal. It could cause blindness and deafness. 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:45.720 It could cause facial differences with teeth and the nose 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:50.360 brain complications. Of course, if you were an adult, you 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.600 would get lesions, and then within a few months it 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.640 goes into the second stage, where you have lesions basically 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.800 all over your body, rashes and pains and headaches, and 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:04.240 finally the disease in the third phase, it dials back 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.040 at abates a little bit where it's not transmissible. But 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:09.880 in that latency period, all of a sudden, it can 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:14.079 attack your organs, specifically your liver and cause liver failure 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:14.880 and kill. 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:19.839 You, and blindness and neurological impacts like dementia and paralysis. 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:21.520 And that's one of the things that makes it so 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:26.240 insidious is after the initial infection symptoms, it just seems 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:28.560 like it went away, and then out of nowhere it 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:30.840 can just come back and kill you. Like you're saying, right, 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.760 So this is what these men specifically in this study 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.520 were dealing with. I think all of them were in 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:42.040 late latency syphilis where they didn't necessarily have symptoms any longer. 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:47.160 And the idea that this was an indefinite open study 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:49.560 that was essentially like this study will end when all 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.360 these guys are dead, meant that they were specifically by 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:58.160 not treating them waiting to see how they died, including 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:02.880 from complications of syphilis like you said, that included organ 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:04.360 failure throughout the body. 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.839 Yeah, And they ended up getting three hundred and ninety 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.800 nine men that were infected and then two hundred and 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.760 one that served as a control. And part of the 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:20.280 recruitment involved a Tuskegee Institute nurse named Eunice Rivers, who 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.959 ended up being a very vilified person because she was 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:28.000 a black woman who helped recruit these guys. There was 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:30.880 advertisements by word of mouth and churches and stuff like that, 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:35.640 and she was co authored on two of the thirteen papers. 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:38.960 And you know, of course was vilified for this for 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:41.880 you know, doing this to men from her own race. 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:45.600 But it seems like she knew what was going on, 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:48.440 but she really believed what she was being told by 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.520 the Public Health Service that black men it progressed differently 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:53.680 in them than in white men. And that's sort of 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:55.839 the basis of what they were trying to root out. 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.840 I saw that she also reasoned it that at least 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:05.119 these sharecroppers were getting treatment that they otherwise couldn't have afforded, 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:10.160 which was no treatment exactly. And hot meals too, like 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.160 that was I mean, this is it started during the depression. 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:15.920 Hot meals were such an incentive that people would submit 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:18.880 to medical experiments for them. So that was a like 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:22.080 it's easy now to look to overlook how important that was, 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:25.520 but that was a big, a big deal sweetener for them. 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.679 Yeah, and penicillin was something that they had been you know, 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:31.440 they'd been searching for something like penicillin for a long time, 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:34.800 especially in Germany. They were looking for they called it 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:38.080 a magic bullet that would, you know, kill the micro organism, 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:41.560 kill the bacteria without harming the cells that it was infecting. 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:45.480 And from nineteen ten on they had some stuff that 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:49.400 kind of worked, something called oh boy, here we go 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:54.400 ares phenamine? Yeah, do you or spinamine? 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:56.400 That's what I was going to go with nice coorts. 0:11:56.960 --> 0:12:00.600 But in nineteen forty a Scottish position named Alexander Fleming 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:05.520 came along and had proven basically in nineteen twenty eight 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:09.319 that penicillin worked, and in nineteen forty was when it 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:11.360 was finally published in the Lancet. Is like, hey, this 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:14.680 is sort of this miracle magical that we were looking for, 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:17.800 and you know, nineteen forty is kind of squarely in 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:21.040 the middle of this study. Yet they didn't use penicillin 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:22.320 still to heal these guys. 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:27.040 No, I mean like the fact that a treatment, because 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.000 before that treatment was really bad for you. They would 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:32.320 like people have been using mercury to treat it since 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:38.000 about fifteen hundred and then that arsphenamine was a type 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:41.160 of arsenic I think you said so, like it might 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:44.600 not have worked, It took a year, it was very expensive, 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:47.160 and it was not a pleasant thing. When the penicillin 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:49.760 came along, you could get one injection of high dose 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:53.480 penicillin and it could cure syphilis in eight days. It 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:57.560 could even cure late stage latency syphilis that was already 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.520 attacking your organs. It could at least cure the it 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:03.360 wouldn't reverse the organ damage. So the fact that they 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:06.760 knew that this existed, I read the Public Health Service 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:11.480 was instrumental in developing penicillin as a treatment for syphilis. 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.040 So it's not like the Public Health Service hadn't heard 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:18.800 that that penicillin worked. That is one of the more 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:23.760 damning points, Like there's no defense that they could offer 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:28.240 that would justify withholding penicillin since they knew it worked, 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.000 and the study went on for what thirty one more 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:31.800 years after that? 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.000 Yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone ever contended that 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:37.800 it was on the table like, hey, we have a cure, 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:39.600 now it's going to stop, because they that's not what 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:40.719 they were after to begin with. 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:43.720 No, And in fact, there were quotes from people later 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:46.440 on who were involved and tried to defend it that 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.160 was basically like, yeah, we had to we had to 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:52.920 actively make sure that these guys didn't get penicillin from 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.160 other doctors who didn't know about the study for things 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:01.080 like colds or whatever, because they would accidentally cure the syphilis. 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:03.679 That's the links that they went to, like the penicillin 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:06.840 was an enemy to this study essentially, is how they 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:07.400 thought of it. 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.280 Well, one more link that they went to before we 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.600 take a break was when World War II rolls around, 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:18.679 they purposefully made sure that these study subjects, these men 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:22.480 were exempted from the draft. Because when you go through 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:25.920 the draft process, you get tested for STDs and treated 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:29.160 for STDs, and so they're like, no, no, no, that'll ruin 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:31.600 our study. We got to make sure these guys don't 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:35.160 get drafted. So the takeaway from that is is these 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:38.080 men probably would have been better off like being drafted 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:42.320 and potentially even like storming the beach at Normandy than 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:45.840 being at home in Alabama being quote unquote treated by doctors. 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:48.480 That's a good point. And the way that they did 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:50.640 it too kind of shows just how complicit a lot 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:52.320 of people in the area where it's not that the 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:55.760 public Health service didn't pull some strings to make this happen. 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.400 They went to the director of public health for Macon 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:03.040 County and said, hey, you're friends with the guy running 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:06.120 the Selective Service board. Why don't you, you know, make 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:08.440 sure that this works. And he did. He pulled the 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:11.680 right strings and and he made it happen. But so 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:14.480 this was a there were a lot of people who 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.920 came together to make this happen and to prevent these 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.880 men from getting their syphilis treated one way or another. 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:24.760 All right, let's take that break and we'll be right 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:25.480 back right after this. 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:58.280 Okay, we're back, Chuck and we should probably talk about 0:15:58.280 --> 0:15:59.360 how this study began. 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:06.840 Yeah, it was launched by the director of phs's Venereal 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:10.880 Disease Division, someone named Talia Faroh Clark, and it was 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:15.640 a two arms study again, a control group and an 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:20.920 infected group. And I believe Clark did not suggest giving placebos, 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.840 even though that happened. But he also didn't say, Hey, 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:27.280 you know, we're trying to study the difference between how 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:29.480 it progresses in black men and white men. Let's bring 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:31.920 in some white men. They strictly focused on black men. 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:34.760 Yeah, there was actually a reason for that. There was 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:39.200 a study that was very similar that was conducted in Oslo, Norway, 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:42.200 from eighteen ninety one to nineteen ten, and the results 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:44.800 were published in nineteen twenty nine that did the same 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:48.320 thing but to all white men. So essentially they used 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:52.160 that data from the Oslo study as a comparison, or 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:58.240 they planned to. I guess, yeah, sure right, so you know, 0:16:58.400 --> 0:16:59.400 it's all good. 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:04.720 Tuskegee itself was chosen again I mentioned because of its 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:07.920 proximity to where they were, you know, drawing from for 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:11.520 Macon County, but also because of the government links with 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:12.800 the Tuskegee Institute. 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:14.000 Booker t. 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:20.040 Washington had come along and really shaped a critical educational 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:23.480 institution in the United States. They were serving needy black 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:26.800 people of Alabama and it's you know, that's another one 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:29.360 of the just big shames is that it puts such 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:31.480 a black eye on what this you know, kind of 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:32.320 great institution. 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:35.119 Yeah, I mean, this is the hospital where people would go. 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:39.400 This is I think where nurse Eunice Rivers worked too. 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.080 So it was a huge betrayal of that community. And 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:46.280 I mean, even though it's developed by leaps and leaps 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.000 and bounds and it's now Tuskegee University, like you said, 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.399 it was a black eye. But even worse than that. 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:55.880 Everybody calls this, including us, the Tuskegee Experiment. They don't 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.840 call it the Public Health Service Syphilis experiment or the 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.440 US government syphlists experiment. So it's an ongoing black guy 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:04.960 on Tuskegee University too. 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:06.040 Yeah. 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:09.080 For sure, they were deceived from the beginning, you know, 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:11.320 like we said at Bears repeating that they thought they 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.479 were signing up for treatment. In fact, they called it 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:19.159 a quote special free treatment end quote. And you know, 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:21.639 so these guys lined up for it. You know, they 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:26.080 thought they had bad blood and they got placebos in 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:29.720 the name of aspirin, mainly like five thousand pink aspirin 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:33.280 tablets were shipped in nineteen thirty four. Also, these these 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:37.000 tonics that then tinctures they would mix up that you know, 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.720 they said, was gonna get their bad blood treated. 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:45.800 Yes, so you said that tel Afario Clark or Talafaro Clark, 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:49.080 and it conceived of this whole study. I think he 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:52.639 stepped aside pretty early on, and starting in nineteen thirty three. 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:57.120 The next year a guy named Raymond Vanderler picked up 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.600 and took over and actually expanded it and now said, Okay, 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:03.600 we're looking for neurological effects. Let's start giving these guys 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.880 spinal taps that are really really dangerous, can be really painful, 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:13.000 and can give you horrible headaches afterward too, So let's 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:16.520 just throw that in for you know, just for kicks. 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:20.040 Yeah. And also in those papers that were released and 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:24.720 collected recently, that same person there was a letter where 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:27.920 he was talking about all the complaints from oh, yes, 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:30.760 so the patients getting spinal taps and how awful it was, 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:34.080 and he was like I'm paraphrasing, but basically like now 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:35.119 I'm the one with the headache. 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:40.080 Yeah, yeah, he said that. So, yes, this is kind 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:45.120 of like the patronizing, at the very least patronizing tone 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:48.760 that the people running this experiment had toward everybody. 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:49.520 Yeah. 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:53.919 So we said also that penicillin came around in the 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:57.040 late nineteen forties or nineteen forties at some point, and 0:19:57.080 --> 0:19:58.960 that was one thing that it was like, Okay, you 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:01.760 guys should have stopped everything and giving these guys penicillin. 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:05.720 Another thing happened in the nineteen forties that essentially should 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:07.919 have put an end to this, and that was the 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:11.600 Nuremberg Trials after World War Two, where, among other people, 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.240 a bunch of Nazi doctors, I think twenty three Nazi 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:19.880 doctors were put on trial for war crimes for running horrible, 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:24.800 horrific medical experiments on people during World War Two, and 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:27.879 I think seven of them were sentenced to death. And 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:32.080 yet despite that, the people running this syphilist study were 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:35.600 just like, gosh, that, I mean, Nazis suck good thing. 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:38.439 We're not Nazis. We're just going to continue on with 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:39.280 this experiment. 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:43.439 Yeah. In nineteen fifty seven, this is in the twenty 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:48.800 fifth year, the Surgeon General awarded certificates to these patients like, 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:53.000 you know, congratulations on all your work here in this 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:55.600 and participating in this study. And then later on in 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.800 nineteen ninety three, one of the researchers, John Charles Cutler, 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:00.480 and we're going to talk about him a bit later 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:02.560 as well, there was a quote where he said it 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:04.760 would be undesirable to go ahead and use large amounts 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:07.600 of penicillin to treat the disease, because you'd interfere with 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:11.080 the study. So you know, they were on record like 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:16.360 time and time again, through countless different changes over these 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:21.399 forty years at Tuskegee, these doctors and nurses, the people 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:23.800 in the public health system, Like it wasn't just like 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:26.720 one like mad scientist running the show all these years. 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:29.439 It was just new people kind of changing hands and 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.359 leading this charge like year after a year for forty years. 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:34.639 Yeah. And one of the things that they clung to, 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:39.000 both internally and externally is this idea that became outdated 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:41.720 when penicillin came along, but they still kept going with 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:49.680 this excuse was that treating late latency, late stage syphilis 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:53.520 could actually cause more harm than good. You could get 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:56.639 this syphilis stirred up again and that could cause that 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:00.960 organ failure, so you're better off not treat And by 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:04.879 the time penicillin came along, by the time Nuremberg came along, 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:08.280 all of these patients would have been in late latency 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:12.240 syphilis were they not already. So that was the thing, Like, 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:14.600 that was what they would push back on, even though 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:17.600 it was not true anymore. I like, once penicillin came along, 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:20.840 it was not dangerous at all, and it really really worked, 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:23.439 and yet they still use that as an excuse whenever 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:27.360 it was challenged. It was very rarely challenged, but it 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:29.520 was challenged by some people, as we'll see. 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:33.560 Yeah, there was the first person brave enough to even 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:38.240 say anything was named Count Gibson. He was a Richmond 0:22:38.280 --> 0:22:41.960