We discuss the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, the infamous clinical trial that the U.S. Public Health Service conducted on six hundred African-American men between 1932 and 1972. Tuskegee participants were told that they were getting free healthcare for life, but in reality they were enrolling in a study of the natural progression of untreated syphilis. Even after the discovery and widespread use of penicillin, which cures syphilis, this inhumane experiment continued. The men—who were selected because they were poor sharecroppers with little education or recourse to the law—were still not
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