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Horrid, yes. Disgusting, yes. It pales in comparison to the medical "experiments" of the Third Reich, but happened in a so-called "enlightened" country. The concept of "objectifying" people is what allows such crap to happen, and populations LOVE to support politicians and religious leaders who objectify people and use them as scapegoats for greater social ills.
One of the guests on Geneology Roadshow was looking for information about her father. He'd lost contact with the family and they couldn't find anything except he was in Alabama. The Roadshow people found a few things and had a hunch and checked the now open files.
He'd been among the men infected, and had eventually died of it, but had recieved some treatment which had been effective to a degree. But for reasons unknown had never tried to contact his family.
It was shocking and sad, and the family was relieved to at least know. It makes me wonder how many of the 'test subjects' fate never got back to family since it wasn't something later staffers who found records might have wanted to disclose.
Usually the people who endrured great suffering and survived to eventually make you are generations back, and we can read about the world they live in but it's not close to us, and at least to me, there's a seperation. But something so cruel, so recent.... I can't imagine how family of survivors feel.
Sadly and disgustingly the Tuskegee experiment was not the first nor last time medical experimentation was carried out upon humans in the United States, and or by its governmental agencies. This and or various local government health workers did the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethi..._United_States
If you were poor, a convicted criminal in prison, a minority, an inmate in an insane asylum, deemed mentally unfit, etc. Anything but a white middle class or above person of sound mind and body, then you had better watch out in those days.
Modern medical ethics as we know (or expect) today along with laws to protect are really a recent invention. Post 1970's for the most part and largely because of the outcry and disgust about the Tuskegee experiment.
The so called doctors and other medical/nursing professionals would never do such things to persons of their own class or family. But anyone not a member of such were deemed less than worthy and so fair game. For decades inmates of mental homes were fair game for anything the medical establishment had in mind. Sometimes families were told, often not.
On another note compulsory sterilization laws were on the books of most all US states and remained so until the 1970's IIRC. Worse the SCOTUS upheld the procedure. What this meant is just upon some doctor signing off that you were "mentally unfit" or whatever reason your ability to have or sire children could be ended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compul...#United_States
That horrid bit of history has been out there for quite some time and has been the subject of more than one televised documentary, IIRC.
In other news, Man Lands On Moon, and General Franco is Dead.
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