The initial plan for this article was to discuss our school’s new founded mental health class. However, to commemorate Black History Month, I will be explaining the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Recently our class has been going over unethical periods in the history of psychology and medical health. During of which we covered the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, also known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, was an American Medical Research event that is infamous due to its unethical roots. The experiment began in the early 20th century and was only meant to last for six months. However, from 1932 to 1972 the United States Public Health Service, or the PHS, allowed syphilis to remain in African American Men without treatment. The project was created to test whether syphilis caused cardiovascular damage more often than it did neurological damage. It was also intended to determine the difference of syphilis’ in the black man and the white man.

To recruit subjects, the PHS aligned with the esteemed Tuskegee Institution - today known as the Tuskegee University. The study consisted of 600 black males in which there were 399 infected and 201 clean. All of the participants were poor sharecroppers from Macon county, Alabama. The researchers began the experiment by withholding the information that the men were infected. They were also left in the dark about its sexual transmission. Alternatively, the infected were told that they suffered from “bad blood”. This was a term that then referred to a wide selection of sicknesses. In the beginning, some patients were issued a treatment for the syphilis like arsenic, bismuth, and mercury. However, this produced worthless data and all treatment was ended. The researchers instead decided to follow the participants to their deaths. Even when penicillin was created in the 40s the subjects were denied its use. This study was inhumane and held an extreme amount of ethical violations.

This project was built upon racism. For centuries, racism has plagued humankind. Even today, it is an epicenter for war and violence in our society. The discrimination of different races and ethnicities is an ignorant act at best. Not only does it go against basic human decency, but it violates all involved. There were many ethical issues in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. These men were not informed that they were involved in the experiment, which violates informed consent. This is the complete and thorough explaining of every aspect included in the research that might reasonably affect the participant’s decision to participate. Another ethical issue of the experiment has to do with the lack of resources. These people could have felt pressured to agree or might not have understood precisely what they were agreeing to. The subjects were selected from a poor community that had little access to healthcare and even less to education.

This is one of the places where racism comes into play. The segregation between the white and black man did not end until the mid-60s. Many of these people were restricted from accessing white schools and hospitals. Even when the Civil Rights Act was established in 1964, racists intimidated them to the point of submission. Therefore, the researchers took advantage of the desperate and experimented on them as if they were less worthy of respect than the common lab rat. This was an all-time low of the medical field.

Of course, through time and many detrimental battles between society, integration began to be accepted and the healing process was initiated. The scars of racism are still present and often reopened. However, we have made progress toward equality. That is one of the many goals of this article: to try to help people understand the ongoing pain caused by these savage acts and to bring everybody closer in body and soul. As of late, we have had a national problem on our hands. The pandemic has affected everyone and we will all be happy to see it end. The production of vaccinations is at hand an order of distribution has been established. However, due to the past actions of medical advancements, some are fearful of receiving the substance. One of the included parties is obviously African Americans. People that have never been discriminated against are confused to their distrist. I hope that this article reveals why.

The world has always been a twisted place. Humans have traumatized the Earth on multiple occasions. Humans are the only species that can experience genuine hatred. However, humans can experience remorse and fall in love. Humans are the only species that can reason between the option of survival and compassion. Humans are unique because they can change on purpose. They can take action and make the world a better place. We have begun to reverse some of the damage that we have already dealt. We are trying to eliminate racism. We are trying to do it the right way. I would like to ask a favor of all my readers: spread the message inside of this article. Spread the idea of love and equality. Spread the history of humankind not out of spite, but out of the intention to cause change. We should never forget about what happened in the past. However, we do have options about what we can do with it. We can choose to dwell on it, and fill our hearts with hate, or we can choose to remember, and fill our hearts with love. The greatest things in the world are born out of good, educated intentions.

“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can

do, and use for a purpose greater than myself.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.