Syphilis Research Paper

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.

None of the men knew that the “bad blood” which coursed through their veins was contagious. None understood how the disease was transmitted; no one explained to them that congenital syphilis was passed on from female to fetus. It was an experiment based on deception, a characteristic that it retained for the next forty years. Through a historical analysis of the experiment several questions arise, particularly the issues of the men’s participation in the experiment and the black professionals who witnessed the study. Why did these Black men take part in this study? Why did the Black health professionals not challenge the study? The answers to these questions are interconnected and lies captive in a term Jones calls racial medicine (Jones 15).

In the early 1900s, the disease syphilis was a concern for the masses especially for individuals in the African American community. It was a common belief that

Tuskegee Syphilis Study was originally a program to help improve the health of poor African Americans in the south, but later on, in the program, a dark turn was taken, and it ended up harming African Americans instead of helping. Starting in the 1900s syphilis was a widely spread sexually transmitted disease. In 1905 Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffman discovered the bacteria that causes syphilis and then a year later August Wassermann introduced the first diagnostic blood test to identify syphilis (page 747). Then, in 1911 Paul Ehrlich created salvarsan, and although it could not treat syphilis it could halt the disease and prevent it from being infectious (page 747). Unfortunately, these events lead to the U.S. Public Health Service and Julius Rosenwald Fund creating a program to diagnose and treat syphilis in African Americans down in Mason County, Alabama (page 747).

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was a clinical research study that took place in Macon County, Tuskegee, Alabama. The experiment was coordinated by the United States Public Health Service and carried out for forty years (Jones, 1). The experiment began in 1932 and ended in 1972, causing harm to the African-Americans involved in the study. This harm was not only physical, but also mental as well. There were a total of 600 men involved in this study (Jones, 1). While 400 of them had supposedly already contracted the disease, the other 200 served as control variables. Many of the men involved in this study were sharecroppers from Macon County who bought a lot of economic stability to the region (Brandt, 2). Subjects were told that they would receive “special free treatment” to cure their disease along with other perks that only made them more willing to participate in the study (Brandt, 2). Being as though these sharecroppers were not educated, they went along with participating in the study. This study’s purpose according to the physicians who were involved was to show that “charting the spontaneous evolution of syphilis in untreated patients would yield to valuable information on the natural history of the disease (Jones, 1).” Although they have given that purpose,

Before 1492, the people of the two worlds, and their immune systems, had no knowledge of other diseases throughout the other world. In the Old World, diseases such as smallpox, bubonic plague, and influenza, were seen everyday by the people within that world, but in the New World diseases like that had never been seen before. Each world, brought new disease to its people. As the Europeans came to the New World, they brought diseases unknown to the Native Americans. The Native American’s immune systems were not immune to these diseases, and caused over 90% to die, due to sickness. With the integration of the Native Americans and the Europeans, a sexually transmitted disease, now known as syphilis, was spread from the Native Americans to the Europeans, introducing new sickness to the Old World.

The experiment first began in 1932, in a small county within the Macon County of Alabama area. In this are rate of syphilis was up by 35%. Interestingly, the setting of the study was conducted at the Tuskegee Institute, which we know now to be Tuskegee University. The study conducted of 399 men, 201 out of the 399 were used as the control group. The control group contained of those who actually didn’t have the diseases. The study also targeted those who were poor and illiterate. A lot of those patients had the slightest clue to which they were being tested for, only being told they had “bad blood”. The doctors participating in the study thought it would be vital; to not inform

As the Spaniards arrived in America, Europeans immediately contracted syphilis from the Indians. Meanwhile, “The Europeans, for their part, gave the Indians measles and smallpox.” (Document B). Chaos arose and population declined, killing off many Native Americans. The outrageous, smallpox outbreak stuck all around Latin America. According to Alfred Crosby, the author of “The Columbian Exchange”, “…the communicability of smallpox and the other eruptive fevers…that any Indian who received the news of the Spaniards could also have easily received the infection.” (Document C). Similarly to the bubonic plague in the old world, the smallpox and measles were the “black death” in the new

.The study consisted of a total of “ 600 African- American men; 399 that were previously identified with having syphilis and 201 were uninfected” (“USPHS Syphilis Study” 1). Throughout the entire study the men were never told that they had syphilis, only told that have a condition known as “bad blood”.

The research article written by Columbia University professor, Allan M. Brandt gives elaborated explanations that pertain to the development, data, recordings, and conclusions of the controversially famed, Tuskegee Syphilis Study. During the early to mid 1900’s, medical treatment options for common illnesses today, such as syphilis, were for the most part, unsuccessful. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study served as an experiment that was aimed to aid the production of a Syphilis cure. The purpose of this experiment was to extend the knowledge of scientists and doctors throughout the country about the development of syphilis in colored people. The U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) aspired to condone a treatment program designed specifically for

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.

Jones discusses the racial attitudes that help to sustain this study. White physicians and scientist shared in the prevalent racism that saturated the United States especialy the South. Many of the white physicians involved were convinced that syphilis was a black disease and that it was more prevaleent among blacks then whites. Jones concludes, “whether by accident or design, physicians had come dangerously close to dipicting the syphilitic black as the represenative black” (Jones 28).

One of the ongoing debates occurring during this time was the possibility of racial variation in the effects of syphilis. A Public Health Service doctor by the name of Taliaferro Clark suggested that this syphilis study would not fail by studying the effects of syphilis on untreated living subjects. Taliaferro Clark’s suggestion was adopted and a study set in motion.

The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment (The official name was Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male) began in the 1930’s. It was an experiment on African Americans to study syphilis and how it affected the body and killed its victims done by Tuskegee Institute U.S. Public Health Service researchers. The initial purpose of the Syphilis study “was to record the natural history of syphilis in Blacks” (Tuskegee University, “About the USPHS Syphilis Study,” par. 2). The study was necessary because syphilis was a disease that didn’t yet have an official cure (when the study began in the 30’s). There were 600 men in all; 399 had syphilis and 201 served as a control group for the experiment. The

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was an experiment conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service between 1932 and 197. In this experiment, the investigators recruited 399 African American share croppers infected with syphilis. Their purpose was to study the effects of the untreated disease. In 1932 the standard treatments for syphilis were toxic and it was questionable whether or not they actually worked. The goal, at the experiment’s beginning, was to determine if a patient was better off without such toxic treatments. The experimenters also hoped to develop effective methods of treating each stage of syphilis. They also hoped to be able to justify treatment programs for blacks. However, by 1947 penicillin became the new and effective medical