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On a sweltering summer day in July 1972,

Charlie Pollard led his teenage grandson, along with a few cows, into a stockyard near Montgomery, Alabama.

As he went about his routine, the 66-year-old farmer heard a voice cut through the air, asking if he was Charles Pollard.

Pollard turned to see a woman approaching.

She first explained that she had been trying to track him down for a while.

Then, identifying herself as a journalist, she posed an unexpected question.

Had Pollard participated in a medical study 40 years ago, one involving a nurse

named Eunice Rivers. The familiar name made Pollard pause. He said that yes, he had been involved

in the study, starting back in the 1930s, when he was a young man. Doctors from the United States Public Health Service had come out

to Macon County, Alabama, offering free medical care to the residents. After an examination,

Pollard, along with other black men around his age, were diagnosed with bad blood. Back then,

bad blood was a catch-all term to describe many illnesses, from sexually

transmitted infections to fatigue or anemia. As Pollard spoke, memories came flooding back from

the decades he spent in the study. He recalled regular visits with doctors for blood tests

and injections. He hadn't seen the doctors in the last few years,

but apart from his arthritis, he felt okay for a guy his age. The journalist asked Pollard a few more questions,

and thanked him and abruptly left. Pollard stood there, puzzled. Her questions about a long ago study left him with a sense of

unease. But when he got home that night and read the newspaper, it became all too clear. A whistleblower

from the U.S. Public Health Service had exposed a chilling truth. The bad blood study Pollard had

participated in had been nothing but a lie.

...