What We Built... And What We Buried: Episode Twelve - The Study That Never Ended

What We Built... And What We Buried: Episode Twelve - The Study That Never Ended

From The Devil Within by EVIO Creative

June 12, 2026 · 23 min

About this episode

This episode discusses the disturbing history of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and its impact on trust in medicine within Black communities.

What We Built... And What We Buried | The Study That Never Ended On this episode of The Devil Within, we close out Season Five—What We Built… And What We Buried—with one of the most disturbing and consequential chapters in American medical history: the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. What began in 1932 as a government-backed effort to study the progression of untreated syphilis was, at least on the surface, framed as something useful—even beneficial. Hundreds of poor Black men in rural Alabama were offered free medical care for what they were told was “bad blood.” But they were never told the truth. As the study continued, the men—many of them sharecroppers with limited access to education, healthcare, or economic mobility—were observed, tested, and subjected to painful procedures under the belief they were being treated. They weren’t. Then came the turning point. By the 1940s, penicillin had become a proven cure for syphilis. It should have ended the study. It should have saved lives. It didn’t. Instead, treatment was deliberately withheld—for decades. More than 400 men were left to suffer the full progression of the disease, not because doctors didn’t know better, but because they…

People in this episode

Host: EVIO Creative

Topics covered

  • Tuskegee Syphilis Study
  • medical ethics
  • racial injustice
  • public health
  • government misconduct

Keywords

  • Tuskegee
  • syphilis
  • medical history
  • ethics
  • Black communities
  • government study
  • healthcare
  • trust
  • penicillin

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Places: Alabama

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