915653095 Dr. Brian Hutler 29 February 2024 Honors Ethics in Medicine Prompt 1: The Tuskegee Study and the Belmont Report The Tuskegee Study has been one of the most notorious missteps of the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), with research conducted between 1932 and 1972. The study monitored the long-term effects of untreated syphilis in African American men residing in Macon County, Alabama. The study's original purpose was to test how the long-term effects of untreated syphilis compared to the treatment of the disease at the time, an arsenic-containing compound known as salvarsan. Researchers told participants they were being treated for “bad blood,” a cultural belief that covers a variety of ailments, including syphilis. In exchange for their participation, researchers
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The researchers did not make efforts to secure their well-being in their research, with any accommodations the researchers provided serving to incentivize participation, not to ensure their safety. The third principle, justice, is where the Tuskegee Study fails. In fact, the report explicitly describes how the Tuskegee Study fails, stating, “in this country, in the 1940s, the Tuskegee syphilis study used disadvantaged, rural black men to study the untreated course of a disease that is by no means confined to that population. These subjects were deprived of demonstrably effective treatment in order not to interrupt the project, long after such treatment became generally available”. It makes sense the Belmont Report would mention the Tuskegee Study because that is why it was written, but in addition, I feel like the study fails this principle for other reasons. Namely, it talks about distributing burdens and benefits fairly, which is a failure in this specific case because these patients were systematically selected because of their
The researchers did not make efforts to secure their well-being in their research, with any accommodations the researchers provided serving to incentivize participation, not to ensure their safety. The third principle, justice, is where the Tuskegee Study fails. In fact, the report explicitly describes how the Tuskegee Study fails, stating, “in this country, in the 1940s, the Tuskegee syphilis study used disadvantaged, rural black men to study the untreated course of a disease that is by no means confined to that population. These subjects were deprived of demonstrably effective treatment in order not to interrupt the project, long after such treatment became generally available”. It makes sense the Belmont Report would mention the Tuskegee Study because that is why it was written, but in addition, I feel like the study fails this principle for other reasons. Namely, it talks about distributing burdens and benefits fairly, which is a failure in this specific case because these patients were systematically selected because of their