Tuskegee Response

Criminal Justice Response The case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was discovered by the press in 1972 (Brandt, 1978). According to the author Susan Reverby, the news article was titled “Syphilis Victims in U.S. Study Went Untreated for 40 years.” This article caused a major public outcry. People reacted negatively to the to the story, and compared the Tuskegee Study to genocide (Reverby, 2009). At this point, over 100 of the 600 test subjects had died from untreated syphilis (Brandt, 1978). The Department of Health Education and Welfare halted the experiment and initiated an investigatory panel. In 1973 the panel ruled that the experiment was unethical, and that treatment should have been provided (Brandt, 1978).
Then, in the summer of 1973 a [civil] class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of the study participants …show more content…
Bioethics is a “reflective examination of ethical issues in health care, health science, and health policy” (What is Bioethics, 2017). So, in 1974 the US Congress passed the National Research Act, “which mandated the establishment of local institutional review boards” (The Tuskegee Timeline, 2017). This act lead to the establishment of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavior Research in 1974 (How Tuskegee Changed Research Practices, 2017). This commission issued of the Belmont Report in 1979 (Reverby, 2009). The Belmont Report contains three principles of research (Reverby, 2009). These principles are “respect for persons, beneficence, and justice” (Reverby, 2009). Overall, the Tuskegee Study allowed the public to apply ethics to health policy, and to ensure that human rights were not omitted while research was being conducted. Moreover, the institution of the National Research Act, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavior Research, and the Belmont Report made the unconsented experiment of humans unethical and