This plot is an allusion to the Tuskegee experiments which, from 1932 to 1972, studied the effects of untreated syphilis in black males. Participants were told they were in a study for which they would receive free medical care, were not informed they had the disease, and were intentionally left untreated for 40 years despite the fact that penicillin had become a standard treatment since 1947 in order to study the diseases effects over time. The study became an infamous example of unethical medical research when the 1979 Belmont Report published details of the study the year before this aired, and the incident led to the creation of new rules for conducting clinical research.