The Tuskeee Study: Radically Changed the Views and Practice of Medicine and Ethics

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.

Breach of Ethics Provisions in the Tuskegee study shown in the movie, Miss Evers’ Boys]

Tuskegee – The doctors violated this principle by not informing the study subjects of the details of the study itself. The subjects were informed they were going to be treated for “bad blood” (CDC, 2015). At the time “bad blood” could have meant syphilis or it could have meant anemia or fatigue. None of the patients received treatment to cure their illness. Additionally, none were ever informed that they were in fact part of a study to document how syphilis progresses when left untreated. These were autonomous men who had vital information withheld from them while being subjects in a research study.

Another issue with this is that the Government Doctors also failed to obtain informed consent from the subjects; they disregarded the human rights of the subjects and committed medical misconduct. These Doctors failed to provide medication, Penicillin, which was deemed safe by this study, to the subjects. According to Ogungbure, although the black participants in the Tuskegee Study had no formal school education, the medical experts were not morally justified to deprive them of their right to know about the dangerous procedures they would be subjected to, including the painful spinal tap, unimaginable psychological stress, and constant body piercing. (Ogungbure 2011 p 84)

There are a multitude of constituents that could be modified to make these unprincipled studies ethical for subjects. The Tuskegee syphilis study was an unscrupulous experiment that illustrated the significance of morality in human experimentations. A noteworthy alteration that would be made is guaranteeing that every participant in experiments are given a full assessment of the dangers that can arise from the experiment. Consent was an element that was fundamentally nonexistent in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, resulting in the study being expressively immoral. In addition, a momentous ethical and legal issue involved in the Tuskegee study were the counterfeited information given to the subjects and the community. David Smolin, the author of the “Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Social Change, and the Future

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study took place over a time period of almost fifty years. During the investigation, John Heller, Director of the Venereal Disease unit for the PHS was interviewed, one of his comments was; “The men’s status did not warrant ethical debate. They were subjects, not patients; clinical material not people” (Tuskegee University). The way these men were treated and looked upon and

Every person or family member who has faced a medical crisis during his or her lifetime has at one point hoped for an immediate cure, a process that would deter any sort of painful or prolonged convalescence. Medical research always has paralleled a cure or treatment. From the beginning of the turn of the 20th century the most unspeakable appalling atrocities against human beings was The Tuskegee Syphilis Study. One of the most horrendous breaches of ethics in The United States history is Tuskegee’s studies and associated research.

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

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.

I found the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment to be very disturbing and sad to hear about. I believe some of the most important qualities of a scientist are he/her integrity and respect. After the researchers performed this experiment, they lost those qualities, at least in my eyes. There are certain experiments that may tread the line of ethicality, but I would definitely have to say that the Tuskegee experiment completely crossed that line.

The Tuskegee Experiments arose from a curiosity in the progression of syphilis is African-American men. In 1932, a study was set up, meant to observe the “consequence” of syphilis (Brandt, 2012). This was done despite the result of the Rosenwald Study in 1929. The Rosenwald Study found that mass treatment of the African-American population in Macon County, the site of the Tuskegee Experiments, was possible (Brandt, 2012). Six hundred African-American men participated in this study: 399 men with syphilis, serving as the test subjects; and 201 men without syphilis, serving as the controls. The experiment was meant to last only 6 months, but ended after 40 years when a story about the Tuskegee experiments was released to the public (CDC, 2015).

This violation of basic human rights was so common that when Dr. Taliaferro Clark proposed in 1932 ‘The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male’ the United States Public Health Services approved it later that same year.

Another ethical issue was confidentiality and privacy, there was personal information disclosed to third parties without consent from the patients in the study, and according to the movie (1997) one treatment was given in groups and the patients performed the treatments on each other. The third ethical issue was the principle of beneficence (goodness), which according to Guraya, London, & Guraya (2014) this principle relates to individuals not being intentionally harmed and the outcomes should be the best possible result. In the Tuskegee study the opposite happened, the physicians and nurse knew they would not treat the men with the best medical care possible, and when treatment options were available they would not provide that treatment to the participants. The study would only come to an end, when all participants had passed away. The next ethical issue was the lack of respect, where each participant should have remained as independent individual. The Tuskegee study was not looking at the participants in the study as individuals, but as a group of poor African American males.

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

Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease, infected four hundred poor black men. The Tuskegee Institute under the watch of the US Public Service conducted a study in which they unethically used these unknowledgeable men against their consent. The men were not informed that this disease was attacking their bodies, nor did they know that the researchers were with-holding treatment that was able to assist them from this deadly disease. This study lead to dozens of men dead, and many wives and children infected. At this time, researchers believed they were helping the larger society as the study was to determine what this disease does to the human body. This paper will discuss the case in more detail, what benefited and devastated society, how much freedom should be allowed in studies, and finally what regulations should be put in place in order for this devastating case to not repeat itself.