Afte After The Tuskegee Essay

This essay examines the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, wherein for 40 years (1932-1972) hundreds of black men suffering from advanced syphilis were studied but not treated. The 40-year study was controversial for reasons related to ethical standards; primarily because researchers knowingly failed to treat patients appropriately after the 1940s validation of penicillin as an effective cure for the disease they were studying. To explore the role of the racism in the controversial study, this essay analyzes the article written by Allan M. Brandt.

The book BAD BLOOD: THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT by James H. Jones was a very powerful compilation of years of astounding research, numerous interviews, and some very interesting positions on the ethical and moral issues associated with the study of human beings under the Public Health Service (PHS). "The Tuskegee study had nothing to do with treatment … it was a nontherapeutic experiment, aimed at compiling data on the effects of the spontaneous evolution of syphilis in black males" (Jones pg. 2). Jones is very opinionated throughout the book; however, he carefully documents the foundation of

In the Tuskegee Study, the main cause of these actions was to record the natural history of syphilis among African Americans. Scientists took six hundred men to be studied and out of those men, three hundred ninety-nine of them were infected with syphilis (Tuskegee University, n.d). Those men were the experimental group and the other two hundred and one were the control subjects’ syphilis (Tuskegee University, n.d). The study took place in Macon County, Alabama. The intentions of choosing those specific subjects were because the individuals were poor and illiterate sharecroppers from the county (Tuskegee University, n.d). People know the study very well because of the lack of ethical consideration towards the African American men. Throughout

The Tuskegee Alabama Syphilis Study was a study conducted between the years of 1932 and 1972 by the US Public Health Services (USPHS) on 600 black uneducated males. Of the 600, 399 were in the late stages of syphilis and 201 did not have the disease. These men were chosen because of their lack of education and trust of government agencies to do the right thing in the offer of free medical care in exchange for their services. These men were not told that they had syphilis but that they had “bad blood.” Even when a cure was found, these men were never given the proper treatment for syphilis. The men passed the disease on to their wives and later to their kids. In 1972, a panel concluded that the study be

In 1932, the Tuskegee Institute partnered with the Public Health Service in Alabama and began a research study on how certain infectious diseases spread through the population. They also studied what those diseases did inside the human body to cause them to pass away. Their study focused on 400 black men affected with Syphilis in a southern Alabama county. Out of which, no subjects were told of their condition. What this withhold of important information is a major violation by the International Review Board (IRB) standards. As a result of this omission of information, syphilis continued to spread through and fatally endanger the families and community that surrounded the 400 subjects. Those experiments on the illnesses of human subjects had many violations in the IRB Code of Ethics. For example, the omission of telling the patients of their condition was a breach of the Informed Consent protocol for the subjects. Also, the refusal of treatment for the men breaches the factors of

In the year 1932, the Public Health Service began a study to observe the natural course of syphilis in the black population in hopes of justifying treatment for these individuals (Centers of Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2013). The Public Health Service performed the study with the help of the Tuskegee Institute, and thus, the study was titled “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” (CDC, 2013 n.p.). The study involved 399 black men with syphilis and 201 without syphilis. Although the men were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” a term describing many conditions including syphilis, they never actually received any treatment. Therefore, the study was performed without true informed consent from any of the patients.

The doctors and the nurse were more interested in gathering scientific data than showing concern for these African men’s human rights. There was no concern for the ethical issues involving these victims. The syphilis scientific study was written about in medical journals for many years but community outrage did not happen until a reporter exposed the study to the general public. The scientific syphilis study ended after it was exposed to the public.

The subjects in this experiment were in fact affected in great deals. They suffered throughout most of their life, from the point of infection all the way until death. While there were medicines available that had the ability to cure those who were sick, the subjects were so illiterate and undereducated that they had no way of knowing about what was going on. The doctors abused all of the patients and crossed several boundaries between personal rights and hospital rights. They lied to the black men, assuring them that they were curing the syphilis. However, not once throughout the entire experiment, did the doctors reveal the truth. Lies were weaved in and out as days, months, and the years of the study went by. Skloot explains in her article, “Taking the Least of You,” that during a court case in 1984 involving patient rights and patient property, the judges ruled, “‘A patient must have the ultimate control of what becomes of his or her tissues. To hold otherwise would open the door to a massive invasion of human privacy and dignity in the name of medical progress’” (Skloot 4). Not only did the doctors of the study abuse the men’s personal rights during the experiment, they also affected them long-term, after the first six months of the study. Brandt explains in his article that, “During the forty years of the experiment, the USPHS had

The other 201 men did not have the disease and were the control group. The men received certain types of free healthcare, and guaranteed burial provisions once they passed away, among other things. There was no treatment for syphilis at the time that the study began, but even once a cure was found, the participants were denied treatment. During the course of the study, dozens of men, along with their wives and children had either died or been infected with the disease. It was determined that although the men had agreed to participate in the study, they had not been given informed consent (giving participants enough information about a study to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate). There were a couple of violations of human rights and ethics during this study, namely that the participants were not given informed consent and they were denied treatment for their disease. Informed consent is an incredibly important of ethics in research. People have a right to know what they are going to be participating in and whether or not they really want to do it. The problem with denying the subjects treatment is pretty obvious, it was detrimental to their own and their family members’ health. Many of them died or

The study took place in Macon County, Alabama where a large number of African Americans were infected with syphilis. Although the study was aimed at discovering whether blacks react to syphilis in the same way as whites, and determine how long a human being can live with untreated syphilis. Due to the African Americans having lack of education, they suffered tremendously at the hands of doctors from the US Public Health Service. When the study was initiated there were no proven treatments for the disease. So the researchers told African American patients they were being treated for “bad blood.” The treatments for syphilis in the early 1930’s offered more potential harm than benefit for the patient so little harm was done by not treating the men in the study.

The book BAD BLOOD: THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT by James H. Jones was a very powerful compilation of years of astounding research, numerous interviews, and some very interesting positions on the ethical and moral issues associated with the study of human beings under the Public Health Service (PHS). "The Tuskegee study had nothing to do with treatment … it was a nontherapeutic experiment, aimed at compiling data on the effects of the spontaneous evolution of syphilis in black males" (Jones pg. 2). Jones is very opinionated throughout the book; however, he carefully documents the foundation of those opinions with quotes from letters and medical journals.

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932-1972 in Macon Country, Alabama by the U.S Public Health Service. The purpose was to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African American men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S government; about four hundred African American men were denied. The doctors that were involved in this study had a shifted mindset; they were called “racist monsters”; “for the most part, doctors and civil servants simply did their jobs. Some merely followed orders, others worked for the glory of science” (Heller) The men that were used for the study got advantage of, especially those

Nonmaleficence is defined as “to act in such a manner as to avoid causing harm to another, including deliberate harm, risk of harm, and harm that occurs during the performance of beneficial acts (Burkhardt, 2014, p. 529). The Hippocratic Oath, is not to be taken lightly and holds medical personal accountable to “do no harm” (Burkhardt, 2014, p. 10). These researchers were breaking their oath to the medical community by lying to the participants. By not actually treating any of these men for syphilis, the researchers were putting the participant’s lives at risk. “Without treatment, syphilis can severely damage your heart, brain or other organs, and can be life-threatening” (Mayo Clinic, 2016). By knowingly and willingly keeping vital information as well as treatment from the men, the researchers were committing serious crimes of unethical

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was an unethical prospective study based on the differences between white and black males that began in the 1930’s. This study involved the mistreatment of black males and their families in an experimental study of the effects of untreated syphilis. With very little knowledge of the study or the disease by participants, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study can be seen as one of the worst forms of injustices in the United States history. Even though one could argue that the study was originally intended to be for good use, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was immoral and racist because only poor, uneducated black males were used in experiment, the participants were not properly informed of their participation in the

First, the participants should have been give an accurate inform consent form. Then the researcher should have conducted their studies accordingly. The researchers should have minimized the harm of the participant by providing penicillin when it became an accepted treatment for syphilis. The participant gave their permission to the researchers with the assumption that they would receive treatments for syphilis. The distribution of penicillin by researchers to the participants could have changed the health status of the participants. This would have change the course of the study and it wouldn’t have been such as big problem. There was a lack benefice, nonmalfience and other ethic principles in the study made the study despicable.