 Miller Idris says even those small comments chip away at Americans' willingness to reject violence as a solution to political divides. Odette Youssef, NPR News. For nearly 40 years, the U.S. Public Health Service left hundreds of Black men in Tuskegee, Alabama, untreated for syphilis. It was part of a study that was only stopped after whistleblower Peter Buxton revealed the unethical and racist experiment to the press.