The Story

The study’s methodology had clearly reflected the pseudoscientific and racist beliefs underpinning eugenics and society more broadly. The project, which began in 1932, was not brought to a halt until its details leaked to the New York Times in 1972, over a decade after the enactment of the Nuremburg Code. There was mass public outrage.

As, Brandt, medical historian, puts it:

“In retrospect the Tuskegee Study revealed more about the pathology of racism than the pathology of syphilis; more about the nature of scientiÖc inquiry than the nature of disease process[…]. The degree of deception and the damages have been severely underestimated” (Brandt, 1978).

The damages have since been estimated by Alsan and Wanamaker:

“[…] The disclosure of the study in 1972 is correlated with increases in medical mistrust and mortality and decreases in both outpatient and inpatient physician interactions for older black men. […] Estimates imply life expectancy at age 45 for black men fell by up to 1.5 years in response to the disclosure, accounting for approximately 35% of the 1980 life expectancy gap between black and white men and 25% of the gap between black men and women” (Alsan & Wanamaker, 2016: abstract).

The effects of the Tuskagee study on modern racial inequalities in public health is even more difficult to determine, but it should not be used as a “scapegoat” to avoid discussing modern-day racism in healthcare (Dembosky, 2021). Nevertheless, its more immediate consequences – from 1932 to the 1970s and 80s – are important to learning the ethical underpinnings of conducting good research. One of the responses to the study was the signing of the National Research Act in 1974.