The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

NameProfessorCourseDateThe Tuskegee Syphilis ExperimentThe Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which involved a study on the long-term effects of syphilis in Black males, is an example of systemic racism. The study’s design involved observing the effects of syphilis when it remained untreated among a group of 400 men who had contracted the disease (Brandt 21). The obvious ethical violation of this study is that its design discouraged actually treating these men, because the goal was simply to see how bad the effects might become. By the 1950s, penicillin became available “as the preferred treatment for syphilis” (Brandt 21), but none of the test subjects in the Tuskegee experiment were offered the potentially life-saving drug. A few men even died. The Tuskegee Experiment is an example of systemic racism because Black men were the subjects being studied without any regard for their personal safety, which makes the study racist; and it occurred within the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), a government institution, which makes it a systemic issue. My personal reaction to this experiment involves a range of emotions and thoughts. Emotions include anger and fear that our government institutions would act in such a