Charles Richard Drew was an African American surgeon who helped improve blood transfusion practices during World War II and contributed to the development of modern-day blood banking. Sometimes called the Father of the Blood Bank, Drew showed that blood plasma, or the liquid component of blood, could be safely separated from whole blood, stored, and used for transfusion. Plasma has several advantages over whole blood, including that it can be stored safely for longer and transported over long distances. Drew’s methods allowed medics to treat thousands of injured Allied soldiers who were suffering from blood loss. Drew was also an advocate for racial desegregation in the United States and fought against the discriminatory blood donation practices of the American Red Cross. Drew’s work made blood transfusions safer and more accessible, which not only helped the Allied war effort in World War II, but also led to improvements in the treatment of complications during childbirth and efforts to reduce maternal mortality rates, particularly among Black women.

In 1932, the United States Public Health Service, or USPHS, began the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, initially known as the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, as an experiment to understand the effects of untreated syphilis in Black men. When the study began, there was no known cure for syphilis. The study involved 600 Black men in Macon County, Alabama, and took place on the campus of Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University. The study leaders did not tell the men the truth about the purposes, risks, or benefits of the study. Moreover, despite the development of an effective drug against syphilis—penicillin, available beginning in the late 1940s—the study investigators withheld treatment and continued to examine the untreated progression of the disease in the men. The study went on for forty years. The US government officially shut it down in 1972 after information about the study leaked to the public. The researchers’ unethical practices, including not obtaining informed consent from the participants, led to changes in federal laws regarding human clinical trials and to the creation of the Belmont Report, which outlines ethical human research guidelines.