A Short History of the World in 50 Lies

by Natasha Tidd

However, in 1933, the experiment hit two mammoth hurdles. The first was that neurosyphilis takes years to develop, and none of the men was anywhere near the advanced stages that the USPHS hoped to study. They wanted to research the absolute last part of the disease’s effect on the brain and then autopsy the body. As one of the leaders of the programme, Dr Oliver C. Wenger, put it: ‘We have no further interest in these patients until they die.’ That wouldn’t be happening for years, yet the experiment had only allotted itself enough money to run for six months. But the USPHS were impressed with the progress so far and so governmental funding was granted to continue the experiment indefinitely. With that issue solved, attention turned to the second problem – the participants. The men now needed to be tied into the experiment for their entire lives and made to believe that they were being cured of syphilis even as they actually died from it. Not only that, but each participant had to willingly sign their body away for autopsy. On the programme management’s part, they only really cared about getting the body – not about the potentially decades’ worth of lying they’d need to do to get there. This was flippantly discussed in a series of letters between Wenger and the experiment’s on-site director, Raymond A. Vonderlehr. Wenger wrote: ‘There is one danger in the latter plan and that is if the coloured population become aware that accepting free hospital care means a post-mortem, e...