FDR Signs Bill Providing $15 Million for Eradication of Venereal Disease
President Franklin D. Roosevelt on this day signed into law a bill providing $15 million for the eradication of venereal disease. Administered by the Public Health Service, the funds provided for a coordinated attack on syphilis in all 48 states.
Passage of the law was one part of a growing public acknowledgement of sexuality matters in the 1930s, including a significant expansion of birth control clinics and the provision of information and birth control devices (although with no public funds).
The Public Health Service program regarding syphilis, however, involved a major human rights violation, known as the Tuskegee Experiment, in which African-American subjects in the experiment who were infected by syphilis were allowed to go untreated so that doctors could study the course of the disease.
Read about the shameful Tuskegee experiment: James Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New and Expanded Edition 1992)
Watch a documentary on the experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUExxTIFaLE
See the movie about the experiment, Mrs. Evers’ Boys: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119679/