Tuskegee Syphilis Study Essay

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)

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.

In Macon County, Alabama, about 40% of African Americans had syphilis. Syphilis caused by a spirochete bacterium that is contracted sexually. In the 1930’s it had relatively no cures or treatments. Syphilis progresses into three stages, the last of which begins to attack the several organ systems of the individual. The victim may become paralyzed, blind and/or deaf; develop heart problems or a mental illness, or other symptoms (Gray 37-38). They decided that they wanted to compare and contrast how blacks and whites develop the disease and the effects on each race. Years before the study of the Negro was set to begin, a similar study for whites was conducted in Oslo, Norway. This study was a retrospective look into the effects of untreated syphilis in whites. The retrospective study used case histories of those who had syphilis when they died not living patients. The U.S. Public Health Service decided to use African Americans in Macon County in the experiment. Originally titled “The Effects of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” the experimentations took place at the Tuskegee Institute which is why the study is generally named the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Jones 93-94). The Rosenwald Fund, a foundation that funded many programs that were used in the betterment of African-Americans began funding this project. After the Stock Market crash of 1929, and the start of the Great Depression, the Rosenwald Fund has to withdraw all the funds that they

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.

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 was the experiment conducted by US public health service among 600 black men to study about the disease named syphilis from 1932 to 1972 (CDC,2016).The participants were poor rural African-American living in Macon County ,Alabama. The study was done to find out the effects of untreated syphilis on those men. The participants were introduced the disease with the name -Bad Blood by the researchers(Jones,p.5). The researchers ran the experiment for over 40 years. During this period, the participants were kept unknown about the causes and treatment of the syphilis .The treatment of syphilis was found but the researchers did not apply on the participants(Tuskegee,2016). The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was unethical and

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.

The Tuskegee syphilis study highlighted the effects of untreated syphilis in African American males by withholding syphilis treatment that was available to these men. In addition, Tuskegee syphilis study demonstrated how the participants’ rights were taken for granted or even minimized in order to obtain information on how the human body was affected by untreated syphilis. This study allows one to view how the ethical rights were violated and allows for guidelines to be established preventing future occurrence.

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

The research agendas that occupied the American medical community during the twentieth century involved the controversy in making medicine a research science. Research-based medicine made enormous strides with discoveries such as penicillin and insulin, however led to issues with medical ethics. The following documents cite a highly controversial research project in the mid-20th century, the Tuskegee experiment that had a profound effect on protecting the rights of subjects in human experimentation. Michael Shimkin discusses in his paper, “A Leading Research Scientist Embraces the Nuremberg Code as a Guide to Ethical Practice in an Age of Human Experimentation, 1953,” the proper way of using people in medical experiments. Vanessa Gamble’s essay, “A Legacy of Distrust: African Americans and Medical Research,” looks at the relationship between race and American medicine to explain how the African American populace became the chose demographic for Tuskegee project. In Dr. Irvin Schatz’s letter to Dr. Donald Rockwell, Dr. Schatz questions the morals of physicians who worked on the Tuskegee Study

In conclusion The Tuskegee Syphilis study had left individuals in the science field with unkind memories of how doctors neglected the oath they took to save lives, how the government also neglected their oath because of the color of someone’s skin and the value assigned to their lives in the name of science. For forty years they continued to experiment with human lives as a mere means to an end. The Tuskegee Study was inhumane, horrendous and broke so many basic ethical principles but the most important consequences. The study has forced the medical/science field to construct several scientific codes that no medical/ science individuals or company should ever break. These codes which came from several ethical principles were derived are also

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).

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

During the study, patients were all given the same diagnosis "bad blood", and were given placebo treatment only (page 748). The study was extended past the original six-months and as a consequence, it did not end until 1972 even with the discovery of penicillin in the 1940s (page 750). Furthermore, patients were denied penicillin and instead were allowed to die from syphilis, all in the name of science (page 749). The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was clearly a horrible study and from it come many legacies, some bad and some good. From the Tuskegee study came the 1974 Belmont Report and established institutional review boards for human subjects (page 750). The medical industry has learned from the Tuskegee syphilis study how to not treat patients, and also updated safety procedures in order to prevent this amount of harm from happening

The book, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, by James H. Jones, was one of the most influential books in today’s society. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment study began in 1932 and was terminated in 1972. This book reflects the history of African Americans in the mistrust of the health care system. According to Colin A. Palmer, “James H. Jones disturbing, but enlightening Bad Blood details an appalling instance of scientific deception. This dispassionate book discusses the Tuskegee experiment, when a group of physicians used poor black men as the subjects in a study of the effects of untreated syphilis on the human body”(1982, p. 229). In addition, the author mentioned several indications of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotype toward this population. Also, this book provides multiple incidents of the maltreatment of human beings. The reader is able to identify the incompetence of the helping professions and violation of human rights, ethical issues, and dehumanize African Americans.