Review of Bad Blood

In 1932 the United States Public Health Service (PHS) began deliberately withholding treatment for syphilis from 400 black men. For forty years, until 1972, government scientists and private physicians in and around Macon County, Alabama carefully recorded the effects produced by untreated infestations of the spirochete. Treponema pallidum: gummas (rubbery tumors), crusty ulcers on the skin, bone deterioration, liver deformity, lesions of the aorta, blindness, paresis--a softening of the brain that produces paralysis and insanity, and death. The stages of the disease's development and the consequences of not treating it were all known in 1932. And so was a cure. Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, by James Jones, is a chronicle of the appalling cruelty that turned people into "subjects" for the sake of science. The men in the study were told that they had ??bad blood??--but the ??treatment" they received was only aspirin and iron tonic. The PHS worked with local doctors to ensure that no antibiotics or other treatments would be given that might alter the progression of the disease.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe