Medical racism didn’t begin or end with the syphilis study at Tuskegee
The study is often blamed for distrust of the U.S. health care system. It’s not that simple.
![Five Black men, all wearing hats, stand near an old building](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/120522_ac_tuskegee-annivesary_feat.jpg?fit=1030%2C580&ssl=1)
The U.S. Public Health Service deceived the men in the syphilis study at Tuskegee (several participants shown here) and withheld treatment from those with the disease. “The wounds that were inflicted upon us cannot be undone,” Herman Shaw said in 1997.
National Archives