1932 The United States Public Health Service begins the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male with more than 600 subjects, approximately two-thirds of whom have syphilis. White doctors tell their subjects only that they are being treated for “bad blood.” Ultimately, 128 men die from the disease and related complications; 40 of their wives are also infected and 19 of their children are born with the disease. It is later revealed that for research purposes, the men were denied drugs that could have saved them.
