Tuskegee Experiment Research Paper

Improved Essays
Tuskegee Experiment

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment began in the 1930’s after a pilot program ended after it ran out of money, the pilot program was a program that treated 10,000 poor African-Americans with syphilis for free but there wasn’t enough money to continue the program so it ended shortly after it started. Taliaferro Clark then came up with the idea of the Tuskegee experiment which was where the government conducted an experiment to research and study syphilis and latent syphilis in African American and to learn if Syphilis was different in whites and African Americans. The experiment was conducted in Macon and Tuskegee Alabama where lots of poor African Americans lived and couldn’t afford health care. In the experiment,
…show more content…
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 …show more content…
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Random House, 2010.

Deadly Deception. Directed by Denise DiAnni. Princeton, N.J: Films for the Humanities, 2011. Documentaryaddict.com, 23 April

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Hela Cells

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The participants were given free health exams, free meals, and burial insurance. The catch was that none of the subjects knew that they had syphilis, and many of them were not given proper treatment for the syphilis. These subjects were not given any treatment because they had no use to the doctors until they were dead so that they could then perform autopsies and then develop a cure from the information that they found. This is probably the most disgraceful thing that you could ever do. How can doctors be okay with leaving people to die, without even telling them why or not even telling them they are sick?…

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Like many great stories there is always a beginning. The legendary Tuskegee Airmen’s story would begin with the start of World War II. Europe was very vulnerable due to the first world war. As a country in Europe, Germany was effected by the instability. Adolf Hitler took advantage of this weakness and allied with the National Socialist party.…

    • 997 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Both the Tuskegee study ad the Kinsey study are incredibly interesting to look at, in terms of the studies themselves, and the impacts they had on our society. The Tuskegee experiment has both positive and negative aspects to it. I believe that this study did help to contribute to advancements in medicine, specifically, in regards, to syphilis. Also, a major positive, is the fact that because the experiment was so unethical, I think this helped to spark future experiments from allowing this kind of behavior by the researchers. This is evident with the creation of the Tuskegee Health Benefit Program.…

    • 242 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tuskegee Airmen “The skies buzzed with the sounds of gunfire and fighter jets flying around, We advanced through enemy lines, the Soviet Union was retreating as their fighter planes kept getting taken out. The Red Angels were the cause of this. They were our fighter planes, also known as the 99th Squadron.…

    • 1124 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Dedicated, courageous, determined, fearless, patriotic, these are just a few of the words used to describe the Tuskegee Airmen over the years. The Tuskegee Airmen were a prestigious group of African-American men determined to go above and beyond their call to duty to change racism in the United States military. These heroic men were faced with racism and adversity at every corner; nevertheless, they stayed true to their cause and fought until the very end for a noble cause dear to their hearts. No one can come close to comparing to the Tuskegee Airmen, who altered the way the United States of America and its military forces would see African-Americans for years to come. Racism was an immense issue not only for African-Americans all across…

    • 1830 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    "The study involved 600 black men - 399 with syphilis, 201 who did not have the disease"(The Tuskegee Timeline). In order to get the patients to sign up, they told them that they had bad blood that they needed to come in to make sure they stay alive. "Researchers told the men they were being treated for "bad blood," a local term used to describe several ailments, including syphilis, anemia, and fatigue"(The Tuskegee Timeline). Most of the men that were in the experiment were poor and illiterate sharecroppers. The study was conducted in a ferocious manner, the patients were put through "treatment" that were almost as bad as the ones the Nazi's did to the Jews.…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tuskegee Failure

    • 187 Words
    • 1 Pages

    A great amount of families and thousands of loved ones were affected because of the destruction of the test study that took place in Tuskegee experiments. The compensation in which family members of those who perished and victims who were directly damaged were given can in no way substitute human life. From this horrible disaster, regulations as well as establishment have been given the responsibility to protect individuals participating in research trials. The job of the nurse and that of the medical practitioners is plainly defined by the regulations of social justice, the hindrances of damage and the regard that have to be shown for human life. Advising for patients and endorsing equal opportunities for all is important in order for the…

    • 187 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved 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

    Clinical trials are necessary to advance medicine, but where is the line drawn and what is morally acceptable? Steven Joffe, professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine says, “Strong resistance to randomized treatment assignment also arose in ethical grounds, particularly in the area of cancer” (Steven Joffe). Though ethical grounds for medical research has come a long way, there was a point in time when ethics were not a thought. For example, in 1932 the Public Health Service began a study on syphilis with the Tuskegee Institute.…

    • 1995 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ethics and morality have been of great philosophical interest to me from the time I was a child. It is mind boggling the spectrum of which we recognize good and evil and the relativity of opinion that ensues. I am always humbled by the findings and arguments made by such studies as the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo. Where participants of the study seamlessly assumed their roles as prison guard or prisoner in which progressed an environment of abuse and lack of empathy for the powerless. I assume many of the psychological mechanisms, which cultivated such a grotesque but profound experiment where in place when conducting the Tuskegee Syphilis study.…

    • 227 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In class I learned about the Tuskegee study and the different types of drugs used and abused by Nazis and German physicians. The Tuskegee study is very important because it has a huge impact on how we conduct research today. The Nazi and the people who did the Tuskegee experiments are very similar because they either used drugs or innocent people for their own selfish reasons. German doctors gave methamphetamine drug Pervitin to Nazi soldiers to enhance their energy to fight better in World War 2. The Germans supplied them with this drug because the idea was that they can turn a regular guy into a super soldier.…

    • 236 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The experiments in Guatemala involved infecting female commercial sex workers with gonorrhea or syphilis, and then allowing them to have unprotected sex with soldiers or prison inmates.” (U.S. Department of Human and Health Services). In some cases, the United States paid the commercial sex workers to have relations with the soldiers and inmates. The Tuskegee experiment doctors documented the natural growth of syphilis, the Guatemala Experiment doctor deliberately infected people with the STD. The experiment ended in 1948 because of gossip and the doctors didn’t want the truth to come to…

    • 991 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Tuskegee Syphilis Essay

    • 1747 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Then they are given the choice to participant or not. This is not the case for the Tuskegee experiment. The men were not even given a chance to deny their participation. If was simply said that if you had bad blood then they were going to give them treatment. Even though most of the participants did not ask what bad blood was, the doctors were still obligated to tell them what the risks were, which they never…

    • 1747 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The HEW Final Report had concluded, “fundamental ethical rule is that a person should not be subjected to avoidable risk of death or physical harm unless he freely and intelligently consents. There is no evidence that such consent was obtained from the participants in this study.” (Brandt, 1978, pg. 26) as the main point of unethicality in this experiment. It was most definitely a big part of it, but the blind eye towards the obvious racial intent of the study could be argued to be just as unethical of the HEW. Dr. Clark and Vonderlehr both went into the experiment talking badly of the men in Tuskegee, speaking as if they were another species entirely.…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    However, the individuals who were recruited by the USPHS were not privy to all of the information and were taken advantage of due to their lack of education and poor economic status. Furthermore, even after penicillin was found to be an effective cure, patients were withheld from treatment. According to the Belmont Report, a document that came about in 1978 notably as a result of the Tuskegee study, If a physician proceeds in his interaction with a patient to bring what he considers to be the best available techniques and technology to bear on the problems of that patient with the intent of doing the most possible good for that patient, this may be considered the pure practice of medicine. In addition, the report published by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research affirms that experimental and treatment programs represent two distinct fields of biomedical research and they should only be conducted if the benefits outweigh the risks.…

    • 1271 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays

Related Topics