Infect, Inject, Neglect: America’s Medical Experiments Gone Mad

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Cullen is back with a triple dose of truth and sarcasm, dragging some of the U.S. government's darkest medical sins into the daylight. First up: Tuskegee, where Black men were told they were being treated for “bad blood” while they were being watched die of syphilis for 40 years—just to see what would happen.

Then we slide into the cells of Holmesburg Prison, where mostly Black inmates were lathered in chemical burns, injected with god-knows-what, and turned into human petri dishes—because “they had no place to go.”

And finally, buckle up for a one-way trip to Guatemala, where U.S. doctors went full supervillain and deliberately infected prisoners, soldiers, and sex workers with syphilis and gonorrhea—without consent—then ghosted the whole country like it was a Tinder date gone wrong.

This episode isn’t just history—it’s a horror story with real bodies. Cullen peels back the lab coats and government lies to expose the racism, exploitation, and raw cruelty at the core of these experiments. Don’t expect a happy ending, but expect the truth.

https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/index.html

By Toni Frissell https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5665720

By RadioFan - ramp of CLT airport, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19088674

By Contributed by The Future Tuskegee Airmen of Det 015 - http://www.af.mil/shared/media/ggallery/other/afg_021220_046.eps, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3909066

Video for YouTube @TMDpod

https://www.doi.gov/video/remembering-tuskegee-airmen

https://dn721605.ca.archive.org/0/items/AwDEn6T3BUUHyd8Ab0whZvCeccnyww/tmpd8mvogy2.mp4

https://archive.org/details/46834PanAmericanUnionBogata

https://ia800209.us.archive.org/21/items/ADriveThroughBunkerHillAndDowntownLosAngelesCa.1940s/BunkerHill1940s.mp4

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee Timeline. CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/timeline.html.

National Library of Medicine. The Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee: Digital Collections. U.S. National Library of Medicine, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/Collection-Untreated-Syphilis-Study-Tuskegee.html.

National Archives. Records of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (RG 442). National Archives at Atlanta, https://www.archives.gov/atlanta/finding-aids/tuskegee.

Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Ethically Impossible: STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. Government Printing Office, 2011. https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Guatemala_Report.pdf.

McNeil Jr., Donald G. “U.S. Apologizes for Syphilis Tests in Guatemala.” The New York Times, 1 Oct. 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/health/research/02infect.html.

Frontline. “U.S. Government Apologizes for Guatemala Study.” PBS, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/us-government-apologizes-for-guatemala-study.

Hornblum, Allen M. Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison. Routledge, 1998.

Philadelphia Inquirer Archives. “Leodus Jones, 74, Bore Witness to Holmesburg Experiments.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, https://www.inquirer.com (use article permalink).

Moreno, Jonathan D. “Prisoner Research: A Historical Perspective.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 97, suppl. 1, 2007, pp. S47–S53. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.97.Supplement_1.S47.

General Background on U.S. Medical Ethics Violations

Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Doubleday, 2006.

The Hastings Center. Research Ethics and Human Subjects. https://www.thehastingscenter.org/br