The Purpose Of The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

Decent Essays
Tuskegee syphilis experiment was a horrific study done on African American men in 1932, with many unethical actions. The men were told that there were being treated for having “Bad blood”, when in fact they had a sexual transmitted disease that can lead to painful, and deadly symptoms such as hallucinations, weak nervous system, or even cardiovascular problems. The are many unethical points in this study that were overlooked. One being is that the men were not informed on the whole purpose of the experiment or the dangers of the study. In the beginning I understood the sole purpose of the study, and how it could have been beneficial for them and whoever else had the disease. But to put them in potential danger without their consent is crucial,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In his book, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, James H. Jones argues in chapter 14 “AIDS: Is It Genocide?” that “No scientific experiment inflicted more damage on the collective psyche of black Americans than the Tuskegee Study.” Jones goes on to explain how when the forty year experiment was revealed and later an AIDS epidemic occurred the black community in America were suspicious of AIDS being a repeat of the past. In this chapter Jones goes on to explain how AIDS was disproportionately affecting the black community and how that led some to believe that AIDS may have been created as a way to eradicate blacks in America. What stood out to me the most was when Jones discusses an article in the American Journal of Public Health…

    • 291 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The United States Public Health Services recruited hundreds of African American men with syphilis and watched them die a slow, painful, and preventable death (Skloot, 50). The U.S government funded an experiment that tortured these innocent men. This was an act of racism. The Public Health staff choose these black men as research subjects because they were “a notoriously syphilis-soaked race” (Skloot, 50). How is that the government can allow this to happen?…

    • 797 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Between 1932 and 1972 an infamous clinical study was conducted by The Public Health Service, called The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. It was to study and record the natural progression and growth of untreated syphilis in 600 impoverished, African-American men, in hope to find treatment programs for people involved in the study. Out of the 600 men, 399 had the disease and 201 did not have the disease. While doing so, they would receive free health care from the United States Government. Researchers and doctors told the patients that were apart of the study that they were being tested for “bad blood”.…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    It is the purpose of governmental power to police the freedoms of the citizens that they represent, although this did not take place during the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Bill Clinton made an apology public in 1997 directed toward the families directly affected and those who survived this study in Tuskegee which disrespected the foundation of human rights. Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers freedom from intolerance and Article 5 states "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" These primitive freedoms were taken from all subjects involved in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Those responsible endorsed impoverished and uneducated African American men to take place by…

    • 310 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Allan M. Brandt wrote this article, “Racism and Research: The Case Study of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study” to assert the Tuskegee Study in a historical context and he wanted to relate it to the ethical implications that were seen in the twentieth century. The syphilis study that is being talked about was a study that included 400 syphilitic black men. There was also another 200 black men that were unaffected and served as a control. The issue that Brandt reveals is that when penicillin, the drug that treat syphilis, was revealed in the early 1950s, these 400 black men were not given the treatment. This study went from 1932 to 1972.…

    • 1381 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The treatment of human subjects in research has evolved dramatically over the past century. Society has witnessed maltreatment and abuse, and in response, has pushed for oversight and ethical standards for scientific study. In this posting I will discuss some points of the “Tuskegee Syphilis Project” including why the men chose to participate in the study, if the study violated respect, beneficence, and justice, and if this study would be approved today with current regulation and safeguards in place. In the beginning, the idea of the Tuskegee study had merit.…

    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The ethical violation that took place in the Tyskee Syphilis study were biased and disrespectful. The participants of the study definitely were not treated with concern, they were misled with promises of “free medical care” that lead them to believe that whatever they had would be treated and disclosed. The experimenters never disclosed all the information to the participants that would be relevant to them to participate. The participants were never given the opportunity to ask questions about the procedures they would undergo. Even when the study was over they were never told about the deception that took or any underlining health issues.…

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    But once people in charge of the Tuskegee experiment learned about places offering treatment they then stopped anyone who was a part of the experiment from seeking treatment from anyone but them by showing up at the other place treatment places and demanding they return to Tuskegee since they were a part of a government experiment and feared if they received the real treatment for syphilis it would mess with their study. The people in charge of the Tuskegee experiment went as far as to keep the people in the experiment from being drafted to go to war. The reason they did that was because when everyone who was drafted was tested for syphilis and if they tested positive they were sent to get treatment and the government didn’t want them to receive any real treatment. Nothing seemed to stop them from keeping those men from receiving real treatment, not even when a new law was made in 1947 stating that you’re required for people to tell participants of an experiment, get consent from them to be a part of it, and required you to tell them of all the risks that could happen from partaking in the…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tuskegee Syphilis

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages

    “One cannot work with a group of people over a long period of time without becoming attached to them”; Rivers said this in a 1953 article. It is obvious that she forms some connections with the applicants of the study. Although one may think River’s participation in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was ethically and professionally wrong as a nurse and as a human, she presumed her part in the study was to better the African American race. American culture has grown rapidly from the 1932 era, an era that permitted this study. There are still great deals of work to be done.…

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment is one of the most famous examples ofunethical research. The study, funded by the federal government from 1932-1972,looked at the effects of untreated syphilis. In order to do this, a number of Black men inAlabama who had syphilis were misinformed about their illness. They were told theyhad “bad blood” (which was sometimes a euphemism for syphilis, though not always)and that the government was offering special free treatments for the condition. The “special free treatment” was, in fact, nothing of the sort.…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tuskegee Study Definition

    • 345 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A central tenet of the Belmont Report is respect for human dignity, which was not upheld in the Tuskegee Study. The report outlines two fundamental rights for the preservation of human dignity when conducting a study (113). These are the right to full disclosure and the right to self-determination. The right to full disclosure entitles participants in a study to receive a full account of the requirements of the study, the potential risks and benefits, and the option to decline to participate. Thus participants are able to make a voluntary, informed choice about taking part.…

    • 345 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Those involved with administering research funding acknowledged the public disapproval generated by the exposure of gross abuses in medical research. Examples of abuses in medical research included the uncontrolled promotional distribution of thalidomide throughout the United States, labeled as an experimental drug; the administration of cancer cells to senile and debilitated patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital; and the uncontrolled distribution of LSD to children at Harvard Medical Center through Professors Alpert and Leary. One of the most famous cases of gross ethical neglect and abuse by medical researchers is the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment which spanned from 1932 to 1972 which studied the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African American men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S.…

    • 1337 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    These ethical codes and regulations were put in place to protect people from being harmed and to ensure that researchers adhere to a strict code of conduct and to follow four ethical principles including beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, and fidelity. According to Resnik (2017) historical events that have occurred that prompted regulation for healthcare research included the Tuskegee Syphilis Study involving four hundred African American men who were never treated or even told they had syphilis and the intentional inoculation of hepatitis on mentally disabled children to observe the progression of…

    • 1356 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In studying the essay “Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study” written by Allan M. Brandt, it is easy to conclude that the Tuskegee study was founded entirely off racism in the medical community and had no real relevance in the study of syphilis at the experiments’ conclusion. It became something much more useful to psychologists and sociologists to understand the “pathology of racism” rather than the “pathology of syphilis.” (Brandt, 1978, p. 21) The experiment led to the senseless death of dozens of people, hidden under the guise of research that became flimsier and flimsier as years passed and penicillin became widely available. Even after the experiment was finally terminated, the HEW Final Report completely ignored…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    However, how and why it took place when it did must be closely analyzed to determine why it was unethical and to prevent it from reoccurring in the future. According to Allan M. Brandt, the study “revealed more about the pathology of racism than it did about the pathology of syphilis; more about the nature of scientific enquiry than the nature of the disease process.” At the time when the study began, racism was still very prominent throughout the United States, especially in the South. As such, the fact that doctors believed black people to be different and react in a dissimilar fashion to diseases in comparison to white people did not create uproar; instead, it was widely accepted in the medical sector. However, the ethical issues concerning this case go far and beyond the racist nature of the population at the time.…

    • 1271 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays