18: Secret Medical Testing on People & the Government Knew?! The Tuskegee Experiment
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

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Look! We got a new little setup going. Welcome to the Dark History Library! Make yourself comfortable! Got my little Dark History book here full of secrets that we're gonna unveil. I also ordered some robes to be wearing in my new library but they're not here yet so just bear with me. T-shirt. So let's get comfortable. Let's take off our shoes. I'm gonna take off my shoes. I don't know about you guys. These things are heavy.

Hi, welcome. I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and I'd like to welcome you to the Library of Dark History. This is a safe space for all the curious cats out there who think like, "Hey, history is just really boring, you know? Is it as boring as it is in school?" And like let me tell you, no, it's not. It doesn't have to be boring. It's actually very exciting depending on who's telling the story, you know? That's what I've learned.

That's what I've learned. Anywho, so today we are going to learn together all about dark, mysterious, dramatic stories that our teachers never told us about. It gets real dark in this dark history library of ours. We're gonna spill some secrets. Like today's story, let me tell you. So today's story is like, it's really messed up. It's really messed up. So let me open up my Booksy Dixie. Oh.

Today we're going to learn about STDs. Do you know about STDs? They happen. It's okay. Don't feel ashamed. Okay, so let's just get into the story. Enough rambling, Bailey. So, have you ever heard of like a super random job, right? And you're like, how does one get that job? Like there's such a thing as a snake milker. Yeah, someone who like milks little snake nipples.

and then they get milk from a snake it's a real job they extract snake venom and they use it for snake venom things real job well i was reading about some of these jobs and i heard about something called a venereal disease investigator so joan buckle in joan my bird here um because venereal disease investigator real job and i was like wait a minute this sounds

It's literally an investigator, but like they work for the government and only investigate sexually transmitted diseases. So I kept reading about this. I was like, let me, what is this about? You know? So I did, you know, I went to Google, beep bop boop, scoop a dupe, great. A man from 1965 named Peter Buxton came up

Boop. And I was like, who is this? Like, who did this guy murder? Because it's my Google search history. So, I mean, someone probably got murdered. And let me tell you, Peter actually didn't murder anyone. Like, good for him. He actually saved lives. And he did this by being a whistleblower on one of the most horrendous, horrendous medical experiments in our country's past. The Tuskegee Experiment.

Have you heard of it? Some of you have may like already heard of it. But today we're really going to get into it and figure out what the hell was going down. Because shit was going down. Okay. So basically Peter was working at the public health service in San Francisco where he heard about how a doctor down in Alabama was in trouble because he had treated someone who had syphilis with penicillin.

And he was like, wait, wait, that's really weird because penicillin is the treatment for syphilis. Like that's the cure for it. Why would anybody be mad at that?

Well, let me tell you, he did a little research, his own research, and came across a massive study where doctors were intentionally leaving African American men with syphilis untreated and not telling the patients that they even had it in the first place. Plus, by then, syphilis was totally curable and had been for many decades. And these reports were saying they were intentionally withholding treatment so that they could watch these people die and like

study it, I guess. But the worst part of all is that some people actually knew what was going on and nobody did anything to stop it. So Peter actually went to the CDC and complained, like, why are you guys running this study? And you would think that when the government heard about this study, that they would be like, you know what, you guys, you're right, this is really sketchy, they should knock it off. But of course they didn't because doing the right thing is difficult for some people.

or large businesses, I should say. So the CDC warned him to shut the heck up, that this was above his pay grade, and to stay away from this study. Mind your own business, Peter. Get out of here. Goodbye.

Fighting words. Peter went to his friend who was a reporter. Now, anytime you want to get a story out that's trying to get buried, you know, by a large company or something, and try and bury a story, what you want to do is you go to the press. Because the press, they love to help you out and drag a bitch. Oh, yes. They will help you get that story out there. So Peter did just that. So that's when it lands in the hands of a reporter named Gene Heller.

Now, Jean goes on to really investigate and dive deep into this story. Now, we're talking hours of interviews, dusty files found deep in basements, cobwebs just going through it. So, in July of 1972, Jean's article titled Syphilis Victims in U.S. Study went untreated for 40 years, hit the stands, and almost instantly was picked up by local newspapers, newspapers,

to the New York Times. It was everywhere, babe. It was also broadcast on TV and radio stations all across the frickin' nation. It went from a secret experiment no one talked about to the thing that everyone was talking about, as they should, honestly. And the backlash from Gene's article was immediate and swift. There was outrage galore.

The article pointed out that this wasn't just like a couple of years, this was a 40 year long experiment. That's like a whole lifetime worth of experimenting for some people, okay? Yeah. On top of that, it also focused on the fact that they were treating humans as guinea pigs and they called attention to the obvious racism that was embedded into the story. Well shortly after the article came out, the study, if you can even freaking call it that,

It finally came to an end. But by that point, 100 of the original 400 patients had died, and at least 40 spouses of the test subjects had died, and at least 19 children were born with syphilis after their mother contracted it.

One of the main subjects of the investigation was a man named Charlie Wesley Pollard. Charlie was an African-American farmer whose family had owned land for decades just outside of Tuskegee, Alabama. He was one of the first subjects the media would talk to from the study.

And when Jean, the reporter, found him, she informed him that the quote unquote treatment he was receiving for his condition was not actually a treatment at all, that it was pretty much fake. Well, this was obviously pretty shocking to Charlie. Okay, he'd been getting treatment, quote unquote treatment, for years, and now a reporter was telling him that it was a lie.

So this must have been super hard to believe. So Charlie decides to go home and just marinate on it. Think it over. But when he got home, he found that his story was all over the news. It was on the radio. It was on TV. And he was like, wait a minute.

Like, they're talking about my life. They're talking about my friends. They're talking about my neighbors. And it was just weird and probably uncomfortable because it's a small town, and now his name was being known all over the country. And, like, he didn't even consent, first of all.

So, Charlie would go on to watch the news and start to piece together what the heck was going on. That's when he learned that the condition he was being treated for was syphilis. So, let's back this up and figure out how this happened. The story of the experiment starts in Macon County, Alabama, all the way back in the 1930s. Now, Macon...

it's kind of like bacon but it's not, it's Macon, was a county that was primarily occupied by African Americans. In fact, it was 82.4% black because slavery had ended in 1865 and it was just 65 years prior. So people growing up in Macon County likely had family members who experienced life in America under slavery. So slavery was abolished, right?

Yes, sorta. But, and like this is a big but, the reality of being enslaved doesn't just disappear overnight. I mean, people wanted to make money to start a new life for themselves after centuries of slavery. But the options were super limited because the main industry in Alabama was farming. So, at this time, many people were put in jobs on farms where they only made enough money to cover rent and they wouldn't even have enough for food.

Basically, they came out of slavery and white people were still finding ways to exploit their labor and make sure they stayed dependent on them. The reason I'm mentioning this is because people in Macon didn't have the most money, but they were working hard to be in charge of their own future.

They wanted to trust that things were getting better. They were able to make money at a job. I mean, yeah, it wasn't very much, but hey, it was a start. They're making their own money. But they were also near a college in the city of Tuskegee, which was a college for African-Americans where they knew they could get a proper education.

So with this university essentially being in their backyard, there was an institution the black residents of Macon County could trust. So let's talk a little bit about the Tuskegee Institute because the school played a huge role in the community. Now it helped transform an area that was basically all farmland into one of the top schools for African-Americans in the whole country.

what used to be a luxury, going to college, you know, luxury, seems to now be within their grasp. Yes, people would travel from all over to attend the school, but the school would also teach locals how to read and understand farming techniques. Eventually, the school was growing so fast that they would expand their reach into healthcare. And

And expanding into healthcare was a very big deal. I mean, we're in freaking small-ass, little-ass Alabama, okay? Segregation and racism were at a maximum level. Jim Crow laws are now everywhere saying that black people and white people are separate but equal.

We know what they really mean. So even though they're separate but equal, it still was really hard for black Americans to find healthcare, which made Tuskegee Institute the main place to receive quality healthcare. So it's huge. It's a big deal. Healthcare. Yay. Unfortunately, it's common in the medical industry to think that skin color affected how diseases and medicines would interact with people's bodies. For the record, that's completely wrong. It's false.

There was honestly a lot of rumors and information going around that caused a ton of damage to people. For example, they would say or some believed black people have thicker skin or black people don't have as many nerve endings so they don't feel as much pain. It's super ridiculous and just to make it very clear, there is literally no science supporting this. None whatsoever.

A lot of these beliefs were social beliefs and not medical ones, but they still made their slimy little way into how doctors perceived black patients. Well, with these stupid ass beliefs, it led them to believe that

Syphilis was affecting the black community differently than white people, essentially. That's what I'm getting at. Nowadays, we don't really think too much about syphilis because, I mean, there's a cure, which is great. Great, right? And if you happen to get it, you can just take a pill and that will take care of it for you. Ta-da! Gone. But it wasn't always like this. I mean, syphilis, if you got syphilis, it would be a death sentence. You could die. Let's pause for a quick ad break.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory. Welcome back.

Syphilis, remember? Great. You need to know about why and how syphilis was bad so you understand why there were like whole ass studies about it. So syphilis happens in four different stages and each stage has a whole kit and caboodle of horrors with it. Horrors, not horse. Horrors. You get it.

Syphilis can be transferred mainly by sexual activity, but syphilis can be contracted very easily through a bunch of ways and not just like through sex. Surprise, hi. This includes birth, breastfeeding, which is really dangerous because if babies got it, they'd end up just dying. Babies' immune systems are so fragile that they would just die.

Dead, bye. But let's say the baby survives, right? They didn't die. Yay! Unfortunately, if they had syphilis, they could get blindness, deafness, or horribly deformed teeth or noses. You'd like folks up your face, man. But for adults, once they are infected, the first stage is usually a little something like a canker sore, just like a sore wherever you got exposed.

which oftentimes it would be like on your private area, you know. Well, after the sore shows up a few weeks later, it becomes more painful and it turns into a rash. Now this is considered the second stage of syphilis. And besides the rash, it would also make you feel really weak. You would have headaches and it gave you full body pains. But by the end of stage two, once the rash and the sore is gone, you're no longer contagious.

That said, you're not safe. Okay, a lot of people are like, "Oh my God, I'm not contagious, it's gone." But really, the disease is still inside of you. So then the third stage comes in and it becomes like this little sneaky ass disease. It's like just there lingering in your body. There are no visual signs of the illness.

And this can last for months, weeks, or even years. And a lot of people just go live in their lives with syphilis and they don't even know because it's not doing anything in their body.

Those people, they get off easy, right? Great. But if the disease decides to progress and becomes the fourth and worst stage, it begins attacking your heart, your liver, your kidneys, your skin, or your blood. One sign of the disease is that some patients' noses fall off. Their freaking noses would fall off of their face. You understand? Your nose. I don't know why it's involving your nose.

when it's like on your lower region. Isn't that weird? Or is that just me? Okay.

Okay, so your nose falls off. Bye. So let's say your nose fell off. Well, people would assume that you were some kind of hussy because, you know, you probably obviously had syphilis. You're a little nasty. Freak nasty. This is a side note, you little hussy. The nose thing is what led to the plastic surgery industry taking off because people really wanted to keep their noses. I mean, you want to keep your nose? It's very essential to your profile look.

Profile. Nose. You need it. Anyways, back to syphilis. So eventually it would lead to organ failure. And when that happens, babe, you're unalive. Unalive. You don't keep living. It's just game over for you. You get it. It's awful. So with all this being said, you could probably see why people wanted to study it and find a cure, right? Very dramatic way to go.

Anywho, now before you go and get too freaked out and take a vow of celibacy, keep in mind there is a cure now. And like I said earlier, it's penicillin. Not a big deal. Oh, unless you're allergic to penicillin.

Sorry. Penicillin wouldn't become the common treatment for syphilis till World War II. Now, before it existed, you had to just be terrified and lose your nose. At this point, it's the 1930s, okay? Now, there had already been a lot of attempts to treat syphilis, but they were just as dangerous. And honestly, it just took a really long time. It wasn't successful is what I'm getting at. And for months, doctors would inject you with things we know are toxic now, like mercury and arsenic.

They were like poisoning people. Mercury and arsenic, if you don't know, not great options to be taking, okay? It actually could lead to you dying or the patients dying. So not a good treatment for syphilis because you're going to probably die from syphilis or you're going to die from the treatment. Great. Which option do you want?

So science wanted something better and obviously more effective, right? And in order to do that, testing had to be done on humans. And up until then, most testing had been done on white people and very little testing had been done on the black population in America. Remember, they believed that disease would affect them differently.

So they believed the same thing with syphilis, okay? See, a lot of doctors, they had this sick idea that being white meant that you were healthy, right? You're white, you're healthy, you're great, cool. And every other race, they weren't good. They were not healthy and they needed help. So this led them to believing that African-Americans were more prone to diseases. Okay, so this is gonna sound really stupid, but they believed, the medical people, the people that are smart,

They believed that they would essentially die out or go extinct because they were weaker than the whites. Yeah, I know. It sounds stupid. But before that happened, they wanted to study them like they were little lab rats or something. And as you might expect, this goes south really quick as doctors watched people die because they thought nobody would care.

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So, a doctor named Tulliver Clark pitched the idea that Macon County, Alabama would be the best place to hold a study about how syphilis would affect African American men. At this point, there was still no cure, but they were trying experimental treatments to see if maybe some treatments worked on black men that didn't work on other races.

The idea was to observe the men for a short period of time, like half a year, six months, and see how the infection went and then treat it. Well, the community in Macon County didn't even know that they had a syphilis problem. You see, when people in the community got sick, they would go to the doctor and the doctor would be like, oh, you have bad blood. Doctors actually diagnosed black men with, I'm using quotes here,

Back then, bad blood was kind of a catch-all term for basically any disease. Like if a black man was sick, it was always a case of bad blood. Sometimes it was just fatigue. Sometimes it was actually syphilis. It's important to know up front that the men weren't actually told they had syphilis. Just bad blood.

Even though the doctors knew it was syphilis. They didn't tell them. You get it? You following? Good. So to everyone in Macon County, they just thought they were getting free treatment for their bad blood. So the community is super jazzed about this. For the first time, it seems like someone cares about their well-being and was willing to offer them some different types of treatment for the mystery disease that seemed to be deadly.

And these doctors came through and offered to help them for free. And for Macon County, where poverty was everywhere and wages were incredibly low, free health care sounded like a real nice gift. You know? It would actually sound nice now, wouldn't it?

The treatment the men were offered was a combo of aspirin, vitamins, and iron supplements. It doesn't sound like much because it wasn't trying to be much. It was just supposed to make them feel better for a little bit. But the doctors knew it wasn't going to make a difference against, let's say, syphilis. You can't treat syphilis with vitamins. FYI. It was honestly just for appearances. So they could be like, look...

Treatment. A solution for you. Here. Well, let me tell you. After a while, people would start to get a little suspicious of these doctors. Like it didn't really seem anything was getting better for them. So, interest started to fade for the people around Macon. That's when the doctors would bring in their secret weapon.

an African American nurse named Eunice Rivers. Eunice worked at the Tuskegee Institute and became part of the syphilis study in 1933. Eunice's job was to be the community organizer because as a local woman, she would be able to connect with the people a lot better. Eunice had some really clever methods to get people to participate in the study.

She knew that it would be hard to get people to just show up and trust some white doctors. So Eunice came up with what everyone called Miss Rivers Lodge, which was basically her own little community outreach center. And at the lodge, patients could get a free hot meal on examination days, plus transportation to and from the hospital, and a ride into town if they needed to get groceries or something like that.

Plus, on top of all that, they got the free medical treatment for any other issues they may be having. So how can you not say yes to this study? I mean, it seemed like they're really taking care of you. Kind of. Not really. But they, you know...

It's almost like if you turn this down, you would probably be doing a disservice to your own family who didn't have much money or access to medical care. So this was kind of a no-brainer. Eunice would also provide a burial insurance program a few years into the experiment where if a participant in the study died, funeral benefits would be paid to surviving family members. While doctors loved Eunice's burial insurance program, let me tell you why. Because when the patients died,

the hospital would be allowed to dissect their bodies before burial. Now, of course, the doctors didn't tell Eunice's part. They just told her to keep bringing the sick people in. Buddies!

A side note about Eunice, we shouldn't really blame her for any of this. A lot of people today, they would say that she was complacent about what was happening, but whether she actually knew what was going on, she ended up being an advocate for all the people involved. Eunice would always stand up to the doctors and force them to treat the patients with dignity.

And maybe she knew what was going on. Maybe she didn't know what was going on. But what we do know for sure is that she saw a way to help get government resources like food, basic health care, and transportation into her community. And she utilized it.

I don't think we can call Eunice a hero or a villain, maybe somewhere in between. She's probably just a person doing her damn job, okay? She's a single nurse, and we don't know if she knew what was going on. And she really cared about the patients.

She would keep in contact with them long after the experiment ended, up until she died in 1986. Okay, so now let's get back to the study itself. So it starts in 1932, but you know what had happened right before that that affected every industry in America?

Well, it's called the Great Depression. Yes, it was a thing. And when that happened, there wasn't much money to go around for stuff like scientific studies. Oh, nay, nay. So not long after, funding for the treatment, air quotes here,

side of the study started to dwindle away because they just didn't have the cash. So no more vitamins and aspirin for you guys. So you think because they didn't have any more money for the study, the doors would close, right? Shut it down. They'd end their experiment and move on. But of course not. These doctors kind of look around. They're like, hey, let's just stick around and see what happens. Let's see how this turns out. And you know,

Maybe this plan would be okay if syphilis wasn't a deadly disease, but it was. And their only goal was to open up their dead bodies and see what was going on inside. I think if you're going to do that, you should at least give the patients a chance to help themselves and prolong their life. But that was not something the doctors cared about.

They needed bodies. There was never any treatment plan. The vitamins were completely useless and they knew it. They didn't want to help them survive. The doctors at the Tuskegee Institute only wanted to look at how syphilis killed black people if it was different than what happened to white people. And next comes the part of the story where things get really fucked up. Because you're probably thinking, Bailey, wasn't penicillin a thing?

Penicillin, remember? It cures syphilis. We talked about it earlier. And yes, you're so beautiful for listening. I love that for you. I mentioned earlier that it wouldn't be invented until World War II.

But that didn't stop me.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash Dark History today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Dark History. So the Tuskegee study began in 1932 and it ended in 1972. Did you count that? 40 years. Is that 40 years? Yeah, 40 years. Wow.

Okay, so let me explain what happened because how did a study go on for 40 years, right? Right, I'm glad we agree. About 10 years after the experiment started in 1944, penicillin, the most basic antibiotic you can think of, became the main treatment for syphilis. It actually cured it, ended, goodbye, and it still cures it today. So if you got syphilis tomorrow, your doctor would probably prescribe penicillin.

Now at this time, the United States was gearing up for a war. Why does that matter? Well, the problem that the United States had in the First World War was that the soldiers were coming home with syphilis. Could you imagine? Your husband comes home and you're like, excuse me? Syphilis?

So before they started the next world war, they wanted to get the syphilis problem in check so the wives wouldn't catch on what they were really doing, let's be honest. The study of syphilis was kicked into overdrive. We had to make sure our patriots were in fighting shape. Because of this, using penicillin became really popular and widely available almost overnight.

So you would think that the government would say something like, okay, well, we had our fun, but we don't really need to see the effects of syphilis on African Americans because there's a cure now. No one has to die anymore. Great.

But of course they didn't, of course they didn't. They were very persistent as to what they were doing. And this is what is so dirty about the whole damn story. Not only did they still not tell the patients that they had syphilis, but they didn't even give them the cure for this deadly disease. You know what's really interesting about this? Are you listening?

there was another group doing unnecessary experiments on humans right around the same time the government decided to continue the Tuskegee experiment even after a cure was available. Okay, so I'm gonna bring up Nazis and you're probably like, "Where does that come in?" But I know it sounds random.

but I promise it's relevant to this story. It's because the Nazis would perform medical experiments on prisoners in concentration camps. I mean, it was fricking horrible. They would do crazy stuff like take people to high altitudes to see how far they could survive when parachuting from a plane. I know it sounds so extra, like why do you need to know that? What kind of research is that? Or they would leave them out in the freezing cold to see how long it takes to freeze to death.

I guess they just want to know what was going on, you know? Sometimes they would give them a disease and see if they could come up with unique cures for it. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Sounds similar to little something going down in Alabama. So when the war ended, the Nazis were actually held accountable for something called the Nuremberg Trials. And the entire world put Nazis on trial for all the horrific things they did throughout the war, including

including these super fucked up human experiments. From these trials came something called the Nuremberg Code. This code basically was a set of rules that a bunch of countries agreed to, including, hello, the United States, who were basically leading the charge. The Nuremberg Code covered a basic set of rules about insanely evil supervillain crimes. Because we hadn't had to deal with anything like the Nazis before, so they were like, hey, we need to get some ground rules in here.

Because this is new and we don't want it to happen again. One of the things that was outlined in the Nuremberg Code was something called informed consent. This means that any time a doctor wants to perform any procedure on a person, they have to, one, inform them about what it is and what will happen to them, and two, get their consent to go through with it.

Simple, right? Okay? And the whole world pushed for this and the United States fully signed on in 1953. So essentially the United States was acting like a backstabbing Barbara because they were playing the world's cop by saying like, "Hey Nazis, what you did was bad. Shame, shame." But what they were doing in Tuskegee was exactly the same thing. Okay? They were doing the exact same thing, performing medical experiments on its own citizens.

without getting consent from them. Backstabbing Barbara, bitch. Don't worry, it gets worse, you guys. She keeps backstabbing, okay? The government doctors in the Tuskegee experiment made the patients promise that they would not receive any type of medical treatment outside of the Tuskegee Institute. They wanted to make sure nobody would accidentally find out that they had syphilis. Could you imagine if you went and found out you had syphilis? You're like, wait a minute, what? What'd you say? Vitamins, though.

It just wouldn't be a good look. And they also didn't want them to get treated for any other illness because maybe it could impact the progression of the syphilis. The main goal here was to make absolutely damn sure that these people would die from syphilis. That was the goal, okay? So the government would reach out to other doctors in Macon County and give them a list of the study's participants and tell them that they should not treat them. So, like, other people are in on it.

And back in 1940, they would expand to the entire state of Alabama. Oh, wow.

Really? Yeah, they did that. There was a literal list with names on it that told the medical profession to refuse treatment to human beings. Like what the fuck is going on? But get this, some people from Macon County would sign up to fight in World War II, which, thank you for your service, and when you sign up for the military, they give you a little exam to see if you're healthy. And guess what?

Some of the people who signed up were participants of the study. And during the exam, guess what? They tested positive for syphilis. Surprise, surprise. They're like, what? Now, instead of telling them they have syphilis, treating it, and sending them to war, they did not tell them they had syphilis and took them out of the military and sent them home.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Dark History today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Dark History. This wasn't like some weird, forgotten government experiment where it was like one guy who was just off his rocker, just like ruining everything. It was a coordinated effort by the entire medical community within the government.

In fact, it wasn't even much of a secret. While the Tuskegee syphilis experiment was happening, the doctors handling it published their findings publicly in multiple medical journals. Now, medical journals, you could actually read them. But when was the last time you read a medical journal? Exactly. Crickets. Nothing. So they're like, yeah, the people, the test subjects can read this in the medical journal. Step one, where do you get a medical journal? So, you know,

People aren't reading it. People have no idea what's going on. And remember, there's no internet. Nobody knows this is going on.

If the doctors were smart about it, they probably wouldn't mention that the subjects didn't know they had syphilis and they weren't offered any real treatment. This was about observation and not necessarily treatment. They were observing human beings slowly died as they did nothing. Okay, so if you watched my murder mystery makeup, then you're probably familiar with a thing called accessory to murder. Now you would think that these doctors doing this study would be considered an accessory to murder.

So you're thinking, baby, that's the end of the story, right? No, of course not. This is called dark history. There's always more when you're dealing with government cover-ups.

right? So by the 1950s syphilis wasn't really a big deal anymore and the government couldn't control all the study's participants. So it estimated that about 30% of the people involved received penicillin treatment despite the doctors trying to prevent that. The researchers insisted that the participants were too stoic to get treatment, which doesn't really even make sense because what does stoic mean? Thank you.

Second of all, we know that's a load of crap because they told them not to get treated and they told doctors in the whole freaking state not to treat them. But yeah, that's stoic. But in 1965, there was some pushback from the medical community on the Tuskegee experiments. Yay, finally someone's saying something, right? Because remember, they published their findings in these medical journals that...

Some people can find, luckily. And some doctors saw it and they're like, yeah, that's interesting, but there's a cure for syphilis. Do they know that?

And at this point, it's the mid 60s. It's middle of the civil rights era. Now, because it's a civil rights era, you think this would be the end. Okay, game over. We came, we saw, we conquered. Let's wrap it up. Goodbye. But of course, it didn't end there. The doctors at the Institute would respond to the criticism and say that most of their patients were in the late stages of syphilis, so the penicillin wouldn't have even worked on them. Now, this is...

Honestly, this is just a straight up lie, okay? They knew it back then and we know it now. If you have syphilis at any stage, you should take penicillin to get rid of it. You'll treat it, you will survive. Well, there started to be rumblings of doctors in the medical community who were disgusted by the lack of morals and ethics within the government's own walls. They were just freaking disappointed. But that didn't matter, it's too late, you're fucked.

This catches up to Jean's investigation from earlier and one of the victims we talked about before, Charlie Pollard. After finding out about the study, Charlie was pissed, livid, upset.

and other participants found out and they too were also very upset. Before the world found out these men had untreated syphilis, they were upstanding citizens of their community. But after the truth came out, Charlie said that people he'd known his whole life would avoid him on the streets and refused to shake his hand. So they did what anyone would do when finding out some of the medical community was rooting for their death.

They contacted a civil rights attorney. The lawyer they hired began a $2 billion class action lawsuit against three branches of the United States government, the state of Alabama, the Alabama Health Board, the Burial Insurance Fund, and a bunch of doctors. Yeah, they were going after everyone as they should. As they should.

So what happened? Well, on November 27th, 1974, the parties end up settling the case. So if you don't know what that means to settle a case, it basically means that one side of the party, they just don't think it's worth like going to trial over, honestly, because it'll bring bad PR, honestly. So they probably just don't even want the bad PR. So they're like, we're just going to settle and give you some money here. Shut your mouth.

In the settlement, the judge ruled that the survivors would each be awarded $37,500 and a swift shot of penicillin. Which is like fine, but you know, money isn't going to solve freaking anything.

Give me a billion, you bitch. There were payouts for the other victims involved, but just know that most, if not all, the people involved in this, killed by this or impacted by this, they did receive some sort of payout and they all continued to get free medical treatment from the federal government for the rest of their lives, which again, eye roll. It's like, okay, cool, thanks, but that's not gonna bring my loved one back from the dead, you fucking assholes.

fuck you pay me more resurrection zombies bring them back you know just like every other one of these stories some governmental change and apologies came out of this great cool thanks bills were passed yeah we can say that sarcastically because i mean does it really matter i mean it does but it's like don't even the united states doesn't even play by their own rules they do not

Okay? And this was called out very early on. And the doctors even published their findings publicly. And yet, it went on for 40 years. And until the public was firmly behind the survivors of Tuskegee, only then did the powers that be own up for their responsibility in it all. In so many stories you hear, America is the good guy. We're always saving the day. Aren't we? Wow. Yay. Yay.

Don't you kind of love the idea of America? Like what you were taught in history class, it sounded so great. Like we saved people, we're amazing, we're just like this melting pot of different cultures. But then the more you learn, it's just like, girl, it's all a lie. Okay, America is kind of just backstabbing Barbara, bitch. Okay, and that's certainly the case here.

All right, I'm sure we can agree. So I think it's safe to say that these doctors treated their patients like things, test subjects, not humans. And at any point, this simply could have been, this could have been over quickly just by telling the truth. But no, we can't have nice things. Plus, when you think about it, like what was the point of this whole study? Did they accomplish what they were trying to accomplish? We didn't seem like that.

because they found penicillin was the cure for it way before the experiment was over. So what was the point?

Anyone? Thoughts? And these beliefs didn't just go away in the 1970s when this experiment ended. As recently as 2017, a college-level medical textbook was published that had a whole section on how different cultures reacted to medical treatment. The Tuskegee Experiment is an example of a problem that runs deep in the United States. Kind of like the birth control story, huh? Hmm?

They were doing something. Sometimes we have to face a horrific story dead in the eyes and just take it in, stare it down, you know? So that, my friends, is a story about the Tuskegee experiment, which honestly is super fucked up, right? I think we can all agree it's very fucked. They had the cure for syphilis, so why did they continue allowing this treatment to go on for as long as it did when it didn't need to, right? Right?

Great, I'm glad we agree. And what did they accomplish? Unclear motive. Questionable motives, right? So, with stories like today about the Tuskegee Experiment, it kind of makes sense as to why a community doesn't trust a certain organization.

I would love to hear your guys' thoughts. Okay, look, don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to get the whole story because I think we deserve that as people, right? And just because it's all bad news when it comes to like our history, it doesn't mean we're bad people. It means we could be better and learn from it. We could do better things. The more we know, the less mistakes we'll make, right? I would love to hear your guys' reactions to the story. So make sure to use the hashtag dark history so I can follow along over on Twitter.

Anywho, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. You can join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs and also catch my Murder Mystery makeup which drops on Mondays. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices. If you get syphilis, don't worry. There's treatment for it. Unless you're allergic to penicillin. Sorry about that. Talk to you guys next week. Bye.

Dark History is an Audioboom original. This podcast is executive produced by Bailey Sarian, Kim Jacobs, Dunya McNeely from 3Arts, Ed Simpson, and Claire Turner from Wheelhouse DNA. Producer is Lexi Kiven, Daryl Christon, and Spencer Strassmore. Research provided by Thomas Messersmith and Elizabeth Hyman.

Writers, Jed Bookout, Michael Oberst, and Joey Scaluzzo. A big thank you to our historical consultant, Gene Heller. And I'm your host, Bailey Sarian.