The Tuskegee Study Of Untreated Syphilis Relate To The Principles

The Tuskegee Syphilis study was unethical because the participants did not give consent to be tested on, the scientists targeted only black men, and many participants died. The experiment was unethical because the participants did not give consent to be test subjects of this study. The participants were promised free healthcare without their knowledge of the experiment. “The subjects of the experiment were observed over a period of several decades, but the nearly 400 men who were infected were not informed of their diagnosis.

The Tuskegee Experiment Study was a research experiment targeting a group of African American males who had syphilis in which they after failing to acquire the needed funds to continue the study decided along with the government to discontinue all treatments for the control and no-control males to determine ultimately whether or not it had the same outcome for white people as it did African Americans. The men participating in the study were informed by Nurse Evers that they were to be treated for "bad blood,” which was a localized term used by people to describe a host of

This experiment, conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service, was intent to study the natural progression of syphilis in African American male population. The study participants voluntarily participated in the study but the researchers did not properly inform the participants on the availability of treatment or the risks of the disease if untreated. To make the matter worse, the participants were deliberately led to believe that they were receiving treatment from the Public Health Service for free, while the actual treatment was being withheld to achieve the purpose of the research. In today’s point of view, it is surprising that even the federal agency did not respect the dignity of human rights for the sake of research. In Henrietta’s era, even the federal agency did not follow the proper informed consent procedure, and a prestigious institution like John’s Hopkins did not have any regulations or office such as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to govern their research protocols to protect human subjects and their rights.

In Chapter 2, Villarosa researched the history of healthcare in the United States and found a study about Tuskegee Syphilis Study. During this time of study, Black men were left untreated for syphilis without the consent of the participants in order to study the disease. Villarosa argued that this study specifically created a mistrust of the healthcare system among the Black community. Unfortunately, this medical racism continues to exist today. Lastly, Villarosa also expanded on contemporary research about the impact of racism on health outcomes

All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.” As a consequence without justice, the persons affected by unjust laws will never feel racial

The experiment created an uproar among black people whose compatriots who were used as subjects in the study either lost their lives, became permanently disabled, and others became insane. The whole scandal brought forward issues of racism and medical opinions on race (Brandt, 1978). The Tuskegee study aimed to prove a scientific thought about race and hereditary. The point of interest was primarily on the sexual nature of the blacks. According to the American Medical Association journal, white doctors believed that the Negros from the southern states had an excessive sexual desire that threatened the white society, and in that case, the doctors gave out the reports indicating that blacks lacked

Thus, this reaction paper highlights some of the ethical principles that were violated in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Even during the recruitment phase, the people in charge of the study violated ethical principles by lying to potential participants (black men). They distributed flyers informing individuals that they would be treated for syphilis if they participated in the study. The participants had no idea that taking part in the study would endanger their lives.

Brandt, in his essay Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, “To preserve the subjects ' interest, Vonderlehr gave most of the men mercurial ointment, a noneffective drug … This required Vonderlehr to write frequently to Clark requesting supplies. He feared the experiment would fail if the men were not offered treatment.” The test subjects were illiterate sharecroppers who thought they were receiving medicine for the so called “bad blood”. Vonderlehr writes “it would have been impossible to continue without the free distribution of drugs because of the unfavorable impression made on the negro.”

Public Health Service (USPHS) sponsored an observational study of syphilis in black men in Macon County, Alabama (The Tuskegee Syphilis Study). Despite the cure for syphilis being discovered in 1943, the experiment was carried on for almost 30 more years. Letting these African Americans suffer from syphilis was a horrible and unnecessary thing to do when there was already a cure. James Byrd also faced the issue of undeserved treatment because of ethnicity. On June 7th, 1998 in Jasper Texas, three white supremacists murdered Byrd by dragging him behind a truck for three miles on an asphalt road.

Through an abundance of medical and historical accounts, Medical Apartheid and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks exemplify how institutional racism has shaped the lives of African Americans. From the beginning of slavery through emancipation, African Americans have overwhelmingly been at the center of unethical medical research. The vast majority of this research has been done unwillingly. For research and experimentation that received the participant’s permission, there were usually hidden elements they were unaware of. Henrietta Washington sites specific examples, ranging from experimentation on plantations to post-emancipation radiation testing on African Americans.

The Tuskegee study of Untreated Syphilis began in 1932, mainly designed to determine the history of untreated latent syphilis on 600 African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama. 201 out of 600 men were non-syphilitic just unknowingly involved in the study as a control group This study is known to be “the most infamous biomedical research study in the U.S history”. Most of these men had never visited a doctor and they had no idea what illness they had. All of the men agreed to be a participant thinking they were being treated for “bad blood” and plus they were given free medical care and meals.

Tuskegee Film Reflection Allison Elliott California Baptist University HSC210-B Ethics in Healthcare Professor Lindsay Fahnestock April 4, 2023 What ethical principles were violated in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study? The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment violated ethical principles of Fidelity, respect for rights and dignity, coercion, justice, integrity, beneficence, benefits, and burdens. The experiment was conducted without the informed consent of participants, who were largely poor and uneducated African American men.

The Tuskegee syphilis study -- they recruited hundreds of African-American men with syphilis, then watched them die slow, painful, and preventable deaths, even after they realized penicillin could cure them. The research subjects didn't ask questions. They were poor and uneducated, and the researchers offered incentives: free physical exams, hot meals, and rides into town on clinic days, plus fifty-dollar burial stipends for their families when the men died

It has now been a quarter of a century, and yet the images and heartache that still evolve when the words "Tuskegee Syphilis Study" are brought up, still haunts people around the world and touches upon many professionals such as social workers, medical examiners, and so forth. Sometimes people hear about this disgusting human experiment in a highly visible way directed to the entire country as an example of what we as a country and people, in general, should not do. This occurred when the study first made national news in 1972, when President Clinton offered a formal apology, or when Hollywood actors star in a fictionalized television movie of the story. On the other hand the audience may become fainter: kept alive only by memories and stories told in the African American community, in queries that circulate over the world wide web and radio talk shows, or even in courses such as this one being taught by social workers, historians, sociologists, or bioethicists. This is neither the first nor the last unethical human experiment done under the human study for the medical purposes umbrella, basically stating it is ok to sacrifice a few people in the name of medical research.

This study was referred to as the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis