BAD BLOOD: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by...

BAD BLOOD: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by James H. Jones (The Free Press/Macmillan: $14.95; 297 pp., illustrated). Originally published in 1981, Jones’ bitter, meticulously documented expose chronicles one of the most shameful incidents in American medical history: Between 1932 and 1972, government doctors in Alabama denied treatment to 400 poor, uneducated black men with syphilis in order to observe the progress of the disease. The study was not only inhumane, it failed to provide any medical data on the effects of syphilis among Afro-American patients--its announced purpose. In 1970, Dr. James Lucas of the Public Health Service concluded, “Nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States.” In a new chapter, Jones shows how the legacy of the experiment has complicated AIDS education and prevention within minority communities: A 1990 poll disclosed that 10% of African-Americans believed HIV had been created in a laboratory to exterminate black people; 20% believed it could be true.