Normally, our theme is to raise up the voices of diverse persons by sharing ourstorical figures that demonstrate the tenacity, perseverance, and influence of their community in various historical contexts. However, in this episode, we are sharing a real-life horror story. One example of when society treated diverse persons with, at best, shocking indifference. How the world labeled a group of people as “the other” and used that otherness as an excuse to treat them as something less than human. From 1932 to 1972, the U.S. government deceived an entire community and manipulated over 600 African American men, using them as human guinea pigs to study the effects of untreated syphilis.  The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was finally exposed by a whistleblower and would go down in history as one of the most egregious examples of the abuse of authority in medical research.

Photo credit: https://www.history.com/news/the-infamous-40-year-tuskegee-study

Sources:

• “The Discovery of Penicillin-New Insights after More than 75 Years of Clinical Use - Volume 23, Number 5-May 2017 - Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal - CDC.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/23/5/16-1556_article. 
• Gray, Fred D. The Tuskegee Syphillis Study. NewSouth Books, 1998. 
• Heller, Jean. “AP Was There: Black Men Untreated in Tuskegee Syphilis Study.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 10 May 2017, https://apnews.com/article/business-science-health-race-and-ethnicity-syphilis-e9dd07eaa4e74052878a68132cd3803a. 
• R;, F. A. L. B. (n.d.). Uses and abuses of Tuskegee. Science (New York, N.Y.). Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10357678/ 
• “STD Facts - Syphilis.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 Feb. 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/std/syphilis/stdfact-syphilis.htm. 
•  "Tuskegee Study - Timeline - CDC - NCHHSTP.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22 Apr. 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm. 
• “Tuskegee Syphilis Study.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 June 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study. 

This episode was researched and written by Ash Benoist. Audio and music edited by CJ Dearing. Logo design by Ryan Vicario. From History to Ourstory is a Bend Ear Production.