WHO for Health Experimentation and Control – 1. Propaganda

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that is concerned with international public health. It was established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and is a member of the United Nations Development Group. Its predecessor, the League of Nations Health Organization was established following the First World War inside the League of Nations framework.

The use of the word “world” emphasised the truly global nature of what the organization was seeking to achieve. It thus became the first specialised agency of the United Nations to which every member subscribed.  Its first priorities were to control the spread of malaria, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections, and to improve maternal and child health, nutrition and environmental hygiene.

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A Free Essay – The Tuskegee Experiment

The Tuskegee Experiment

From A Free Essay [Edited]

In 1932, in the area surrounding Tuskegee, Macon County, Alabama, the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Rosenwald Foundation began a survey and small treatment program for African-Americans infected with syphilis. The deepening depression, the lack of funds from the foundation, and the large number of untreated cases provided the government’s researchers with what seemed to be an unprecedented opportunity to study a seemingly almost “natural” experimentation of latent syphilis in African-American men.

What had begun as a “treatment” program thus was converted by the PHS researchers, under the imprimatur of the Surgeon General and with knowledge and consent of the President of Tuskegee Institute, the medical director of the Institute’s John A. Andrew Hospital, and the Macon County public

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Tuskegee Lessons

Tuskegee Lessons

“We were treated unhuman at all times. Nobody knows what we went through except those of us who are living participants right today.” Herman Shaw

Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble, a physician and medical historian, chaired the presidential committee on the legacy of Tuskegee that secured an apology from the government. She writes this commentary to mark the 30th anniversary of the news reports that unmasked the study:

I was there when President Clinton said the words, “I am sorry.” Tears streamed down the faces of many black people in the audience. I heard people sobbing. The pain inflicted by the syphilis study was not limited to the citizens in and around Tuskegee. For many African Americans, the fact that the Tuskegee study occurred at all proves their lives are not valued in America.

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Remembering Tuskegee

Remembering Tuskegee

[Forty years ago] the Washington Evening Star newspaper ran this headline on its front page: “Syphilis Patients Died Untreated.” With those words, one of America’s most notorious medical studies, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, became public.

“For 40 years, the U.S. Public Health Service has conducted a study in which human guinea pigs, not given proper treatment, have died of syphilis and its side effects,” Associated Press reporter Jean Heller wrote on July 25, 1972. “The study was conducted to determine from autopsies what the disease does to the human body.”

The next morning, every major U.S. newspaper was running Heller’s story. For Morning Edition, NPR’s Alex Chadwick reports on how the Tuskegee experiment was discovered after 40 years of silence.

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The Tuskegee Timeline

The Tuskegee Timeline

In 1932, the Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began a study to record the [progressive stages] of syphilis in [African Americans]. It was called the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.”

The study initially involved 600 black men – 399 [injected] with syphilis [and] 201 who did not have the disease.  The study was conducted without the benefit of [the targeted victims’] informed consent.  Researchers told the men they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term used to describe several ailments, including syphilis, anemia, and fatigue.  In truth, they did not receive the proper treatment needed to cure the illness. In exchange for taking part in the study, the men received free medical exams, free meals, and burial insurance.  Although originally projected to last 6 months, the study actually went on for 40 years.

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Final Report Tuskegee Study Committee

Final Report Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee

In 1932, the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) initiated the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to document the [progressive stages] of syphilis. The subjects of the investigation were 399 poor [African American] sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama, [injected with] syphilis and 201 men without the disease who served as controls.

The physicians conducting the [unethical experiment] deceived the men, telling them that they were being treated for “bad blood.”² However, they deliberately denied treatment to the men [injected with] with syphilis and they went to extreme lengths to ensure that they would not receive

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