Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

During the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, the US Public Health Service withheld penicillin treatment from hundreds of impoverished sharecroppers to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African-American men. This led to their life expectancy falling by 1.4 years, which accounted for approximately 35% of the life expectancy gap between black and white men. The study continued until it was leaked to the press in 1972. A doctor was even reprimanded by the US government for treating an elderly black man with syphilis because the doctor ruined their experiment. The elderly black man was unwittingly part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, and the doctor had unknowingly stumbled upon it.