One extremely horrific example of racism in medicine is the Syphilis study at Tuskegee Institute. The study was originally performed on African Americans in 1932, to see what the effects of syphilis left untreated would be on the cardiovascular, and neurological systems. All participants were the sons or grandsons of slaves who were under the impression they were receiving free medical treatments. The experiment was originally only to last for around 6-9 months, but lasted an alarming 4 decades before ending completely. 399 people were infected while 201 weren’t, instead those 201 were used as a control group. …show more content…
However, instead of administering this cure to the patients of the study, they continued to watch the prolonged effects of syphilis. Even after men went blind and some insane, still nothing was administered to these men. In order to keep using the bodies of those who died during the study, the scientists gave the families $50 so they could keep the bodies for further tests. More than 100 African Americans died from advanced and untreated syphilis. On May 16, 1997 the president at the time, President Clinton, formally apologized for the inhumane tests performed at