Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Summary of Allan M. Brandt’s “Racism and Research:
The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study”

“In retrospect the Tuskegee Study revealed more about the pathology of racism than it did about the pathology of syphilis; more about the nature of scientific inquiry than the nature of the disease process. The injustice committed by the experiment went well beyond the facts outlined in the press and the HEW Final Report”(27) writes Allen M. Brandt. In his 1978 article, Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Brandt is extremely critical of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare’s (HEW) Final Report of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that was released in 1973. Brant contends that the report fails because it failed to examine the experiment in the broader sociological context.

In 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) began a study in the town of Tuskegee in Macon County, Alabama. The USPHS intended to examine the effects of untreated syphilis by observing 600 men (400 who had syphilis and 200 who were not infected). The experiment was originally supposed to last only six months, but it actually lasted for 40 years. During this time the 400 infected men were deceived and lied to, they were told that they were receiving treatment for “bad blood.” In actuality the men were receiving no such treatment, even after 1947 when it became widely know that penicillin was a very effective treatment. Instead these 400 men were being given ineffective tonics and ointments along with aspirin. To make matters worse, not only were the doctors withholding treatment, they were also effective in getting other local doctors and even the U.S. Army to not treat these men. Brandt cites example after example of how the USPHS, from day one, sought to intentionally deceive and mislead the black population in Tuskegee. The failed to inform the participants of the true facts and intentions of the experiment, and therefore could not have received proper consent. The USPHS told the study’s participants that they were receiving government issued medical treatments, they promised hot meals and even monetary assistance with burial costs in order to keep the men coming back. It is difficult to see how such deceptive practices could have been allowed to occur without looking at the influence of racism.

In the early twentieth century Social Darwinism was a commonly held belief that justified and rationalized American racism. “Essentially primitive people, it was argued, could not be assimilated into complex, white civilization. Scientists speculated that in the struggle for survival the Negro in America was doomed. Particularly prone to disease, vice and crime…” (Brandt 21). It was thought that blacks were particularly susceptible to venereal diseases because of their natural propensity for lust, promiscuity and immorality. Many scientists and doctors also argued that blacks were by their nature unlikely to seek medical care and treatment for syphilis. This racist undercurrent is what allowed the Tuskegee Study to occur. The scientists and doctors involved saw the black participants and genetically inferior to themselves. They justified what they were doing by telling themselves that the men they were withholding treatment from, and using as guinea pigs, would not have sought treatment anyway. The continued suffering and spread of the disease and death among this population was an evolutionary inevitability.

Brandt effectively argues, that one cannot truly examine much less understand the Tuskegee Study without acknowledging the commonly held racist beliefs of the time. “Failure to place the study in a historical context also made it impossible for the investigation to deal with the essentially racist nature of the experiment” (Brandt 27).

Work Cited

Allan M. Brandt. 1978. Racism and research: The case of the Tuskegee
Syphilis study. The Hastings Center Report 8(6): 21-29.