Tuskegee Syphilis Essay

Values such as these do not give answers as to how to handle a particular situation, but provide a useful structure for understanding conflicts. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study violated several of these guidelines in order to continue their research. In the past and especially today this study was an unacceptable form of research that lead to the inhumane treatment of many men. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was extremely unethical and should have been put to a stop much earlier in the process. When the study began there may not have been specific guidelines as to how to conduct a study, but after the

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.

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 Experiment was a 40-year-old study from 1932 to 1972 in Macon county, Alabama on Africa America men. The purpose of the study was to learn the different side effects of untreated syphilis in Africa Americans; at that time there was no proven treatment for the disease. The experiment was conducted on a total of 600 African American men. Of this group 399, who had syphilis were a part of the experimental group and 201 were control subjects. Most of the men were poor and illiterate and Researchers from the Tuskegee Institute offered these men the deal of their life, which was free medical care, survivors insurance, rides to and from the institute, meals on examination days, and free treatment for minor ailments

In the 1920’s and 1930’s syphilis was very prevalent and feared among most populations. The U.S. Public Health Service wanted to learn more about this disease and they launched six pilot projects in poor southern communities. One project was conducted in Macon County, Alabama. This project, called the Tuskegee study, was a clinical study of untreated syphilis in negro males. The Tuskegee project was meant to discover ways to improve quality care for the black community. This initiative aimed at achieving greater knowledge of syphilis spanned the course of forty years, from 1932 through 1972, before it was stopped based on ethical dilemmas.

In the article Racism and Research: the Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, by Allen M. Brandt, he discusses a few mains point. The main points of the article is Racism and Medical Opinions, the origins of the experiment, how they selected the subjects, and the HEW final report. In the first point, Racism and Medical Opinions, many of the scientist believed that even with all the “education or philanthropy” the black Americans can’t be cured whether it has to do with diseases or crime. The black Americans also had a lot of deficits and were considered imperfection. Doctors say that the black Americans had a “sexual desire” which puts a lot of the whites in danger. They also say

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)

Throughout the history of psychological studies unprincipled violations have constructed ethical standards that are essential in today’s research. These moral dilemmas created established professional and federal standards for performing research with human and animal participants, known as, psychological ethical codes. The Tuskegee syphilis study and the Stanford prison experiment highlighted a psychological study without proper patients’ consent and appropriate treatment, resulting in a research disaster with unethical incidents.

The book BAD BLOOD: THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT by James H. Jones was a very powerful compilation of years of astounding research, numerous interviews, and some very interesting positions on the ethical and moral issues associated with the study of human beings under the Public Health Service (PHS). "The Tuskegee study had nothing to do with treatment … it was a nontherapeutic experiment, aimed at compiling data on the effects of the spontaneous evolution of syphilis in black males" (Jones pg. 2). Jones is very opinionated throughout the book; however, he carefully documents the foundation of those opinions with quotes from letters and medical journals.

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 first reason behind why the Tuskegee syphilis study was unethical was because of the experiments racism towards African Americans. In

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932-1972 in Macon Country, Alabama by the U.S Public Health Service. The purpose was to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African American men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S government; about four hundred African American men were denied. The doctors that were involved in this study had a shifted mindset; they were called “racist monsters”; “for the most part, doctors and civil servants simply did their jobs. Some merely followed orders, others worked for the glory of science” (Heller) The men that were used for the study got advantage of, especially those

During WWII human experimentation was a big controversy in the medical field. The outburst of human experimentation during WWII resulted in the research of the unethical and vexing cases. For forty years African American males were being used as test subjects to test the spread of syphilis and how it affected the human body. The human experiments of the Tuskegee syphilis study were similar to the other experiments in the sense that the doctors carried out the tests without informed consent. When the Nuremberg Code was established in 1947, it prohibited the practice of human experimentation without the use of informed consent. Before the Nuremberg Code and informed consent, human experimentation was unethical and inhumane as demonstrated in the Tuskegee syphilis study and the mustard gas testing on American troops.

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