Unethical And Criminal Behavior During The Prussian Parliament

Have you ever wondered where a doctor’s method came from? Or so much to even, think who came up with the original idea? America has an interesting medical history, or as I like to call them experiments. Some of those experiments were a positive asset to the history, but others were horrifying. One of those horrifying events would be Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. James H. Jones, the author of “Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment”, covered a book on the historical event. The study was for how the African American male is affected by untreated syphilis. But through the evolvement of the experiment, it became about the neurological aspect. It also depicts the American Government for its untrustworthiness in the health care world.

The art of medicine and curing diseases was not always approached in a scientific way. In fact, many advances occurred between 1919 to 1939, after technological advances allowed scientists to apply the scientific method to medical research. At this time, the ethics of using patients as test subjects either for new medicines or as samples for further testing were not considered. An extreme example of this was the Nazi’s using concentration camp inmates – including children – to run painful and invasive experiments. More modern examples are not so easy to identify as unethical, however. While amputating a leg to develop methods to deal with fractures and war wounds is obviously unethical, harvesting cells to develop a vaccine is not so clear cut, as the disadvantage to the patient is hard to identify. Coming from the various Nazi testing and especially the Nuremberg testing and trials, another code of ethics was developed, called the Nuremberg Code.

Elements of the Nuremberg code of 1947 includes a 10-point statement of ethical principles created to prevent future abuse of human subjects. As during the time Japan and Nazi Germany subjected human beings to torturous experiments in order to obtain data that might prove useful in their war effort (Fischer, 2006). This document is the foundation for human rights when it comes to medical experimentation worldwide. The most important principle above all is to obtain an informed consent. An informed consent explains in depth all potential benefits and risks. The men who participated in the Tuskegee Study were not provided with an informed consent. A study had been done already on the Norwegian men, which made it clear

She describes how Nazi Doctors would conduct horrendous experiments on Jews, such as dissecting living people, without receiving any consent from them. She then explains that the Nuremberg code was later established to prevent such inhumane experiments. Since the code didn’t apply in America, researches like Southam and Mandel continued their experiments without informed consent. However, other doctors still found this to be immoral, and refused to participate in performing these experiments finding that, “Injecting cancer cells into a person without consent was a clear violation of basic human rights and Nuremberg code” (Skloot 132). Skloot compares the practice of American doctors to the inhumane experiments conducted on the Jews in Germany to have the readers see similarity between the immoral methods. Both practices did not receive consent from their patients. She uses research to find factual evidence about practices without consent that were made illegal in another country. By comparing the experiments conducted by American doctors to an extreme event, she leads the reader to develop the opinion that all practices without the consent of the patient are unjust. She includes the opinions of medical professionals to express their concern for these methods to the readers. A doctor from that time would have the greatest insight on the experiments that were being conducted and the practicality of them. The reader then sees it as logical that conducting potentially dangerous experiments without any consent is a violation of human rights.

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.

The chapter on Nazi medical experiments in Chalmers’ book is one of the most fascinating chapters because it examines the different types of techniques that the Nazi’s used to sterilize men and women. Chalmers explains that women were particularly subject to medical experiments because the Nazis were obsessed with destroying inferior races and wanted to perfect the art of sterilization so no more undesirable elements would be born (Ibid 123). However, both men and women were subject to Nazi medical experiments like medical injections, X-Rays, and chemicals, which resulted in burnt skin, abnormalities, and death. Among these experimentations many chemical companies, doctors, and University professors supported the experiments being done on

However, it was more difficult to test all the subjects than expected. SInce they didn’t want to be suspected of their experiment they had to open the selection to anyone with syphilis. It was also difficult to get the participant to enlist so they had to offer free care and therapy, which led to more participants. When they enlisted they were told they had “bad blood” and were being treated for it. Since they weren’t really be treated the doctors had to come up with a way so that it seemed like they were being treated. They would give most of the subjects mercurial ointment and the rest a small dosage of neoarsphenamine. The last step of their experiment was to give the subjects “a spinal tap to test for evidence of neuro-syphilis.” Throughout the 40 years, the USPHS told many of local doctors and the Army to not treat those patients. They were told to prefer those patients back to the USPHS if they did visit them. In the 1950s, some subjects were given penicillin, but only a few were given an effective doses. Those who were given antibiotics had threatened the experiment, which later ended in 1970s. The last main point of the article is the HEW final report. There was a panel by the HEW that discusses the two issues, which were the informed consent from the subject and also should they have provided penicillin to the subjects. In the final report, it was found that by the HEW that the USPHS didn’t have the intentions of providing penicillin

Frankenstein is a fictional story, however the universal theme of lack of ethics in scientific experimentation can be pulled from this story and applied to modern times. During World War 2, Nazi scientists performed grueling experiments, utterly blinded by what they were doing in a pursuit to learn the secrets of life. Joseph Mengele, infamously known as the “Angel of Death”, engaged in human

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

Human experimentation has a history of scandal that often shapes people’s views of the ethics of research. Often the earliest cited case is English physician Edward Jenner’s development of the smallpox vaccine in 1796,where he injected an eight-year-old boy child with pus taken from a cowpox infection and then deliberately exposed her to an infected carrier of smallpox. Although Jenner’s experiment was successful and it confirmed his theory, the method of

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment is also known as the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” which began in 1932. This experiment was lead by the U.S Public Health Services and the Tuskegee University in Alabama. I will identify the ethical problems associated with the Tuskegee Experiment. I will also describe how I would improve the experiment for the participants.

“He who knows syphilis, knows medicine” famed early twentieth-century John Hopkins physician Sir William Osler is often quoted as saying (Reverby). The Tuskegee syphilis experiment is one of the worst cases in human history of unethical practices done. Between 1932 and 1972 the U.S. Public Health Service study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African American men in Macon County, Alabama. These men were told that they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government because they had “Bad Blood”. A local term for various illnesses that include syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. The study had six hundred patients in which three hundred and ninety-nine of them previously had the STD. Two hundred and one did not have it at the

Since my argument has been framed by measuring what took place over the course of the study against the duties of following two of the core ethical principles, it has been deontological in nature. I am convinced that arguing my position from a deontological standpoint is better than arguing from a teleological standpoint because it is easier to see the violations of ethical principles than it is to pinpoint the exact consequences of the study. It is also easy to see how the subjects were treated as mere means to an end rather than ends-in-themselves, which is a distinctive element of deontological ethics, when the physicians decided that the study of the natural progression of syphilis was more important than treating those infected once medicine became

The Nuremberg Doctors Trial of 1946 is the preeminent case recognizing the importance of medical ethics and human rights specifically about human research subjects. The defendants in the trials include Nazi leadership, physicians, and investigators prosecuted for conducting unethical and inhumane medical experiments on civilians and prisoners of war resulting in extreme pain, suffering, permanent injury and often death. The Nuremberg Code, borne of these trials, establishes ethical guidelines for human experimentation to ensure the rights of subjects in medical research. Herein, this writer will first identify and discuss ethical dilemmas presented in the Nuremberg case followed by three

The Nuremberg trials after all this time still remain the benchmark for judging international crimes and this historical event has been used for studies, researches to find some insight as what defines an international law. Crimes against humanity saw its birth after World War II. The establishment of the United Nations in 1945 was a giant step in