In 1932 the US Public Health Service began a study involving roughly 600 Black men.

[00:00:00]For 40 years, the US government studied what would happen if black men were never given the correct medical treatment. This is what the records show. In 1932, the US Public Health Service began a study in Tuskegee, Alabama. About 600 black men took part.

[00:00:14]Roughly 400 of them had syphilis. They were never told that. They were told that they were being treated for bad blood, a local term for various illnesses. The real purpose of the study was to observe what happens when syphilis goes untreated over time in the human body. In the 1940s, penicillin became available, a real cure for syphilis. The men in the study were not given it. The study continued for 40 years. It only ended in 1972 after a Public Health Service employee gave information about the study to a reporter, and it became national news.

[00:00:42]By then, many of the men had died. Some had unknowingly passed the the disease to their wives. Some children were born with it. In 1997, President Clinton issued a formal apology on behalf of the United States government. The records are public. The apology is public. This happened. Follow Unredacted 1776 for more of the history they don't put in the textbooks.