Hey Ansel12! From what I read, the Public Health Service ran the Tuskeegee experiment. The participants in the study had the STD but were told it was a “blood” study. They were offered free health care and funeral services. The Public Health Service is now the Department of Health and Human Services. The main difference between these two cases is that it appears the Tuskeegee men contracted the disease on their own vs. the government deliberately infecting them for study. Both wrong, of course.
And the amusing thing is that the study was founded and carried out by “progressives”. “Progressivism” was overwhelmingly dominant in pre-war America. And it wasn’t even a government study initially. It was started by a private charity funded by the former chairman of Sears Roebuck, a Progressive Jew named Julius Rosenwald. Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Julius Rosenwald, an American clothier, became part-owner ofSears, Roebuck and Company in 1895, and eventually served as its president from 1908 to 1922, and chairman of its Board of Directors until his death in 1932. He became interested in social issues, especially education for African Americans, and provided funding through Dr. Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college (HBCU), prior to founding the fund....
The Rosenwald Fund was also one of the original backers of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. With support from the Rosenwald Fund, an ambitious program had begun to improve the health of African Americans in US southern states in 1928. Emphasis was on treating people with syphilis, then found at a high rate in poor African-American communities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenwald_Fund
No, the U.S. Public Health Service is a sub-agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.