The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service launched what they claimed was a study on “bad blood” in rural Alabama. In reality, it was a 40-year-long lie: hundreds of Black men with syphilis were deliberately left untreated, even after penicillin became the standard cure. Known today as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, this shocking violation of trust exposed deep systemic racism and reshaped the way medical research is conducted.