The Final Report of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Advisory Panel was written for officials at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW) when the agency was facing increasing public scrutiny about a bioethical scandal. The report was a response from the DHEW (today’s Department of Health and Human Services) to revelations that hundreds of black men in Alabama had been the unknowing subjects of a government-operated medical research project. These men were not treated for their disease (syphilis), even though a treatment had been discovered and widely disseminated since the mid- 1940s. Furthermore, since these patients were allowed to remain infected with syphilis, many of their wives and infants became infected with the disease as well. The DHEW organized the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Advisory Panel in early 1972 as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (TSS) became increasingly publicized and shocked large segments of the nation.