On July 25, 1972, Jean Heller, a then 29-year-old investigative reporter at the Associated Press shocked the world with a story of what is now known as the "Tuskegee Study." Heller was reporting on the 1972 Democratic National Convention when a colleague passed along an envelope from a whistleblower who had worked at a local office of the U.S. Public Health Service. Inside were documents telling a tale that, even today, staggers the imagination: For four decades, the United States government had denied hundreds of poor, Black men treatment for venereal disease so researchers could study its ravages on the human body. Heller got the confirmation she needed when she found an obscure medical journal that had been chronicling the study's "progress." "As much injustice as there was for Black Americans back in 1932, when the study began, I could not BELIEVE that an agency of the federal government, as much of a mistake as it was initially, could let this continue for 40 years," says Heller. Starting in 1932, the Public Health Service _ working with the famed Tuskegee Institute _ began recruiting Black men in Macon County, Alabama. Researchers told them they were to be treated for "bad blood," a catch-all term used to describe several ailments, including anemia, fatigue and syphilis. Treatment at the time consisted primarily of doses of arsenic and mercury. In exchange for their participation, the men would get free medical exams, free meals and burial insurance _ provided the government was allowed to perform an autopsy.