The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Join Kelli as she discusses the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, an experiment on black men (without their consent) where the US Public Health Service and the CDC allowed them to live with untreated syphilis infections for 40 years - despite there being a cure: penicillin.

In this episode, Kelli goes over the scientific context of what syphilis is and how one contracts it, then ties it to the historical context of why the US government allowed 399 black men to suffer from late-stage syphilis when they could have given them the cure. It's racism, sure, but we'll dive deeper to expose what really happened here, and why.

Sources Referenced:
Michael V. Uschan - Forty Years of Medical Racism: The Tuskegee Experiments

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