


Copyright 1995 ABC-CLIO. This review was taken from the ABC-CLIO Video Rating Guide for Libraries on CD-ROM, a 5-year compilation of over 8900 video titles and reviews, 1990-1994. For information regarding order VRGL CD-ROM, contact: ABC-CLIO, P.O. Box 1911, Santa Barbara, CA 93116-1911; 805-968-1911
This following text has been included in the UCB Media Resources Center Web site with the kind permission of the publishers.

Four hundred African-American men, told they were being treated
for syphilis, were actually part of the notorious Tuskegee study
that provided worthless medicine and denied them treatment. This
well-documented, dramatic program is an indictment of the Public
Health Service, which allowed the study to continue for 40 years,
even after penicillin became available and it became clear that
syphilis was the same disease in blacks and whites.
The program effectively blends scenes from a current play
based on the study, interviews with survivors, documentary
sequences from the 1920s on, one of the original government
doctors - who still defends the project - and various health care
professionals. Before penicillin, syphilis was a deadly epidemic.
The government started to treat citizens, including African
Americans in Macon County, Alabama, but ran out of funds. They
then decided to study the effects of untreated syphilis while
telling their subjects they were being treated. "Treatment"
involved blood tests and painful spinal taps to provide
information and worthless medicine.
Results were published in medical journals without any outcry
that such a program was continuing to deceive these men and
actually preventing them from getting treatment even when funds
became available. Dozens of lives were lost, and many others
suffered greatly before a 1972 news story, following years of
pressure on the government, stopped the experiment. Many of those
interviewed insist that such an experiment would not have been
allowed if the subjects were not black, and they point out that
such racial programs have contributed to today's mistrust of
white medical professionals and programs.
A wide-ranging audience can appreciate this video dealing with
medical ethics blinded by racist policies.
Deadly Deception

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