The Deadly Deception was an incredibly interesting documentary having never looked deeply into the ethical sides of serious issues such as medical experiments. The film overviewed the tragic Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment conducted in Macon County, Alabama on hundreds of poor black men diagnosed with Syphilis. The disease affected more than 35% of the county’s population, so when word was spread that men could receive free medicine and healthcare from government doctors if they met minor requirements, the study skyrocketed. The medicine the men were promised to cure the detectable and treatable disease was never made available to most men due to money issues the government faced. So, the unknowing men became the perfect “natural laboratory.”
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Privacy was not a huge issue in the experiment, however, things definitely could have been improved. The men involved were apparently open that they had the disease, but being a part of the experiment did not lessen their disease ridden ostracization, it only promoted the uneven racial social structures. The men were not informed about what they were contracting themselves to. They were deceived in the fact that they thought that they would be cured when really they were guinea pigs for the government. Lack of informed consent leads to another one of the IRB’s standards: risks of participation. Because the men did not know what was happening, they were unable to grasp the risks involved. Even after regulations were put in place like the draft and Penicillin was announced as the curer, the men were denied access. As a result of this, many lost their lives or suffered from other side effects. Lastly, the men were of course not allowed access to the data because why would they? The were being majorly deceived so having access to data would reveal to doctors’ true …show more content…
In any good experiment, the subject pool is varying and create different dynamics, unless it is a case study. In the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the hidden motives were to discover if blacks and white contracted Syphilis the same or differently. They went about answering the question by gathering a large group of men from one area. From a psychological research perspective, what would have been more effective would have been to gather blacks and whites who did and did not have Syphilis from a range of areas and then examine why and how they contracted
Privacy was not a huge issue in the experiment, however, things definitely could have been improved. The men involved were apparently open that they had the disease, but being a part of the experiment did not lessen their disease ridden ostracization, it only promoted the uneven racial social structures. The men were not informed about what they were contracting themselves to. They were deceived in the fact that they thought that they would be cured when really they were guinea pigs for the government. Lack of informed consent leads to another one of the IRB’s standards: risks of participation. Because the men did not know what was happening, they were unable to grasp the risks involved. Even after regulations were put in place like the draft and Penicillin was announced as the curer, the men were denied access. As a result of this, many lost their lives or suffered from other side effects. Lastly, the men were of course not allowed access to the data because why would they? The were being majorly deceived so having access to data would reveal to doctors’ true …show more content…
In any good experiment, the subject pool is varying and create different dynamics, unless it is a case study. In the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the hidden motives were to discover if blacks and white contracted Syphilis the same or differently. They went about answering the question by gathering a large group of men from one area. From a psychological research perspective, what would have been more effective would have been to gather blacks and whites who did and did not have Syphilis from a range of areas and then examine why and how they contracted