The Center for Disease Control (CDC) (which by then controlled the Tuskegee syphilis study) reaffirmed the need to continue the study until completion (until all subjects had died and been autopsied). Considerations were limited from the start, and rapidly deteriorated. For example, to ensure that the men would show up for the possibly dangerous, painful, diagnostic and non-therapeutic spinal tap , the doctors sent the 400 patients a misleading letter titled, “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment”. The study also required all participants to undergo anautospy after death—in order to receive funeral benefits. After penicillin was discovered as a cure, researchers continued to deny such treatment to many study participants. Many patients were lied to and given placebo treatments— so that researchers could observe the progression of the fatal disease. In 1934, the Tuskegee Study published its first clinical data, and issued their first major report in 1936. This was prior to the discovery of penicillin as a treatment for syphilis. The study was not secret; it issued several published reports and data sets appeared throughout its duration.
By 1947 penicillin had become standard therapy for syphilis. The US government sponsored several public health programs to form “rapid treatment centers” to eradicate the disease. When campaigns to eradicate venereal disease came to Macon County, however, study researchers prevented their patients from participating. During World War II, 250 of the subject men registered for the draft . They were consequently diagnosed and ordered to obtain treatment for syphilis before they could be taken into the armed services.
PHS researchers prevented them from getting treatment, thus depriving them of chances for a cure, service to the nation, and gaining the benefit of the GI Bill for education, passed after the war. At the time, the PHS representative was quoted as saying: “So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment.”
By the end of the study in 1972, only 74 of the test subjects were alive. Twenty-eight of the original 399 men had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis.
