Tuskegee syphilis experiment

Syphilis ran rampant in the US in the 1920s. Researchers were interested in studying the effects of the disease in untreated patients so they hatched The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. For 40 years, between 1932 and 1972, the US Public Health Service observed the natural history of untreated syphilis without disclosing the nature of the study to participants. African-American men were enticed with free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance if they took part in a “treatment for bad blood”. By the 1940s, penicillin was the standard treatment and cure for syphilis. Researchers knowingly withheld treatment and information from the subjects. Infected men died and spread the disease to their wives, who passed it on to their children.