Medicine9

“The doctor immediately recognized that the man was suffering from terminal syphilis. He prescribed him penicillin – and got into terrible trouble with the disease control authorities. He was accused of treating someone who was not allowed to be treated. No wonder, he knew nothing about the study.”

Der Spiegel (Johanna Lutteroth), 07.06.2012: "Medical scandal Tuskegee death study."

Peter Buxtun (born 1937) is an American social worker and former employee of the United States Public Health Service who became known as a whistleblower due to his publication of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The experiment was discontinued after it became public knowledge.

In the 1930s, doctors began abusing poor black male farm workers suffering from syphilis in the so-called Tuskegee Study. They wanted to investigate how syphilis develops if it remains untreated. The study was conducted by the Public Health Service, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Almost 400 sick men in Tuskegee (Alabama) were deliberately deprived of effective treatment without their knowledge. It was forbidden to prescribe Penecellin to patients when it was discovered to be an effective drug against syphilis in 1943. The aim was to monitor the progression of the disease and its late effects. "The study had no scientific value at all. Because the gruesome consequences of syphilis had been known for centuries" (Berliner Zeitung, 19.05.2022). The study was only discontinued in 1972, after Peter Buxton had tried in vain for years to draw attention to the abuse. In the 1940s, the same group of researchers infected hundreds of people in Guatemala with the virus in order to research the disease (ibid.). Although the researchers described the Tuskegee study in 15 medical journals, there was never an outcry in the medical community (Martin J. Tobin 2022).

*Berliner Zeitung (Annett Stein), May 19, 2022):"Tuskegee experiment: Consequences of the cruel human experiments continue to this day." *Tobin (2022):"Uncovering the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: The Story and Timeless Lessons."

1965