Bad Blood: The legacy of Tuskegee

To commemorate Black History Month, the IMI will host an event exploring the legacy of the Tuskegee ‘experiment’ and its contemporary relevance to research in, and care of, minoritized communities in the UK.

In 1932, the US Public Health Service engaged the historically black higher education college, the Tuskegee Institute, to deliver the ‘Tuskegee Syphilis Study’. Six hundred black men were enrolled initially, of whom 399 were infected with syphilis. Researchers told the study participants that they were being treated for ‘bad blood’, a catch-all term used by local people to describe ailments including syphilis, anaemia and fatigue. There was no informed consent process. In exchange for their participation in the study, the men were given free medical examinations, free meals and burial insurance. By the mid-1940s penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis, but the Tuskegee study participants were not treated. The study finally became public knowledge in the 1970s due to the efforts of investigative journalists, and in May 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologised for the ‘longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings’ in the history of medicine and public health.

This event, chaired by Professor Willem van Schaik (Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection) with panel members Oyinkansola Ojo-Aromokudu (PhD student, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and Matthew Page (Consultant - Infectious Diseases, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust), will explore Tuskegee, its legacy and contemporary relevance to research in, and care of, minoritized communities in the UK, and ask how as a society we can do better in terms of minimising the burden of infectious disease.