Ethical Dilemmas

This study was able to be held due mostly to the segregation of black people at the time and the little to no regulations by the government in the early 1930’s that should have been in place to ensure that there were ethical and moral practices being used. Had this study or type of experiment taken place with another race but at the same period of time I do believe that the results would have been similar due to the nature of the time period and segregation.

In 1932 the American Government conducted a study named the Tuskegee Syphilis study, this project was administered by the US Health in Macon County, Alabama. The Government promises 600 plus African American citizens access to free medication and access to proper health care. This study subjects was all tested positive for Syphilis when they enrolled for the study. However, these subjects were denied medicine and were experimented on to help the Government to better understand the Syphilis virus. The men in this study weren’t aware of the research design and possible danger to them and their families. (Carol Heintzelman 2003 p.1) This study went on for the next forty years.

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

In todays society, the common consensus about human experimentation is that it is unethical, however, people in the past believed it was necessary to advance scientific discoveries. The Tuskegee syphilis study is a prime example of how scientists in the past disregarded the ethics of human experimentation to enhance scientific research. The study was an experiment where four- hundred to six-hundred uneducated African American men were tricked into being tested. Most of the patients were injected with the disease and left without treatment to discover its effects, while the others were safe being used as controls. This experiment lasted for Forty years and was probably the biggest example of unethical human experimentation in America. Fortunatley, the contrivertial actions taken in the experiment lead future generations to create the law of informed consent where the patient understands what will happen during their treatment. The inspiration for researching this topic was how in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, by Rebecca Skloot, Henrietta was used for a scientific study without her consent. In relation to Henrietta, the men in the syphilis study were not aware of what was happening to them and were experimented on without their consent. Overall, the human experimentation in the Tuskegee syphilis study was unethical in many ways.

For example, the Tuskegee experiment that purposely held syphilis experiments on black men while withholding medications from participants treating them like “guinea pigs”. Another historical event is the eugenics experiment on young African American women through selective breeding and sterilization, just to name a few. She explained that physicians are not culturally sensitive to handle historical event that are prevalent in this mistrust of African American people (Ferrera, 2015), Hence why many African American women do not visit a physician. Another example of patients mistrust was the Deborah lacks story, where her cells were being cultivated by scientist and replicated and sold all over the world without the knowledge of her family. While the scientist reaps the rewards Deborah lack’s family was poor, uneducated and also suffering from illness. These traumatic historical events are enough to doubt the sincerity of physicians specifically if those physicians match the physical descriptions of the oppressor.

The ethicacy of human medical research must be brought into question when the studies such as the Tuskegee syphilis and Mississippi appendectomies are examined, the results reviewed, and consequences justified. The word study is very appropriate as the men who participated in the Tuskegee study were not given a treatment or cure

The Nuremburg Code of ethics, was established after human research atrocities in World War II created a standard of ethics. This ethical standard provided the general public with confidence and trust in that human participants involved in research will be respected and receive moral treatment. Unfortunately, the Tuskegee study undermined established ethical boundaries and it violated many aspects of informed consent, autonomy, nonmaleficence as well as many other ethical principles (Riggs,

I am very infuriated with the behaviours of the doctors, board members and peo-ple condoning the experiment that participated in the Tuskegee Experiment. Tak-ing advantage of individuals due to the social class and education is a wrongful matter. I feel this is a government conspiracy that dealt with just blacks and not seeing them as human beings. There were plenty other options on conducting this experiment but targeting uneducated poor black people just shows how much re-spect people have for others. This study went unnoticed for years without any exposure from the government officials to take action on mistreatment to humans no matter what the skin color may be. At this time frame when the Tuskegee Ex-periment was taken place civil rights was not in the full affect to say their rights were violated but the common sense of a person

I completely agree with you that the Tuskegee Study was truly a disgrace. How those men were treated was appalling and should have never happened. There were many ethical and legal violations that occurred during the study. One of the major issues I had was how the researchers took advantage of the men because they were uneducated and poor. “People should not be selected because they are marginalized, powerless, or poor” (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2015, p. 524). The participants believed the study was a dream come true because they would be getting free medical care. We all know the medical care they received was disgraceful and lead to good men dying for no reason. Luckily, in our day and age there are legal and ethical principles put into

I understand that we had no technological advances back in the day and needed to do experiments on people, but this crossed the line in every senses. The purpose of the movie was to show the importance of ethic in social research in areas as well as our private life, biases and genre out of the scheme. However, this study showed that these men were basically cheated and thinking that they were getting the benefit of the doubt, but U.S. Public Health Service violated the rights of the men in the study. And there was racism part of the documentary. If blacks weren't getting treated, then it can infect white people and that lead to such event in our history.

The experiments were able to go on for so long for several reasons including, racism. Racial bias contributed to the mindset that disclosure of risks was not mandatory in this particular experiment. Additionally, scientific research and breakthroughs were encouraged at all cost for the better for the majority. Furthermore, the study had continued without disruption for many decades convincing researchers that their work was indeed acceptable.

One of the factors of the ending of the experiment was the creation of penicillin, which is a treatment for syphilis. It was administered to syphilis patients nationwide but not to African Americans because as previously stated they were considered “experimental subjects, not patients.” This led to people such as Dr. Irwin J. Schatz being the first medical professional to object to the experiment and claim the PHS needed to reevaluate their moral judgments. Another factor was the horrors of the experiment being released to the public by Jean Heller, who was assigned to the story. She interviewed PHS officials who were not hesitant to provide her with information, as they “had nothing to hide.” It was then released how an experiment for a cure had been going and the subjects and whole reason the cure could be made were not given any

A statement in an unsigned article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, gives the prejudicial idea: “‘Virtue in the Negro race is like angels’ visits—few and far between”’ (Brandt 21). Nearly seventy years after Lincoln abolished slavery in the United States, racism and prejudice still flowed through the veins of many Americans and their views corrupted medical research studies with bribery, prejudice, and flagrant disregard for ethics, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis case in 1932. This blatant disrespect for African-American life left only seventy-four men alive of the three hundred and ninety-nine men who participated in the study. These men were chosen as

The study conducted on the African American males was unethical for many reasons. People participated in the study without knowing what the study was about. It was pointed out in the article that the study was not a knowledge secret (Brawley, 1998). It was not a secret but people were not aware of what it was about and how it would benefit them. They did not sign informed consent acknowledging they were aware what the study was about, the risk and the benefits. In the healthcare field, healthcare providers work to ensure that patients are treated right and with fairness regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic background. The article pointed out that a nurse was involved in the study and recruited people from the community to partake in the study.

The Hippocratic maxim “do not harm” has long been a fundamental principle of medical ethics and it requires physicians to benefit their patients according to their best judgment. Who ought to receive the benefits of research and bear its burden? This is a question of justice, in the sense of fairness in the distribution. An injustice occurs when some benefits to which a person is entitled without good reasons. In case of Tuskegee study, the medical professional violated the Hippocratic Oath and the burden of the research was unduly imposed on the African-American