Early Covid-19 Research Isn’t As Inclusive As It Should Be
Experts agree that people of color must be adequately represented in coronavirus vaccine and drug trials. It’s unclear whether that’s happening.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is one of the most infamous — and, ultimately, atrocious — biomedical research experiments in American history.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study began in 1932 as a Depression-era effort to secure funding and justify treatment programs for Black Americans with syphilis. The U.S. Public Health Service recruited 600 Black men in Alabama, 399 of whom had the infection. The men were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” the colloquial term used at that time to describe a number of medical issues, though they never received proper care or drugs.
The study’s true aim — one never disclosed to its participants — was to document the effects of untreated syphilis. Though it was originally intended to last six months, the study went on for 40 years. By 1972, when an Associated Press exposé and a government inquiry led to the study’s termination, doctors had known for more than three decades that penicillin was an effective treatment for syphilis. The men in the study never got it, and more than…
