Another vital theme Jones highlights in the book is the theme of deception. Throughout the course of the entire study, infected participants were not offered any kind of remedy, although two widespread treatments were available at the time. Salvarsan, an arsenic-based drug first developed in the early twentieth century, was identified as a toxic treatment—one that required several painful injections over a long period of time. Often ineffective and unhelpful, PHS officials were able to justify their lack of action towards participants. However, penicillin, a more practical drug for treating syphilis, was also not offered to participants in the 1940s; a health official claimed that the drug was still new and “largely untested.” To counteract this denial of treatment (which didn’t really matter because participants were never made aware of such treatments), participants were incentivized to continue the study with other enticements. Seemingly insufficient, “physical treatments, hot lunches, and burial stipends” appeared attractive to poor people in the South, because part of this study took place during the Great