Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Ethical issues for the tuskegee study
Ethical issues for the tuskegee study
Ethical issues for the tuskegee study
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Ethical issues for the tuskegee study
Autonomy A simple definition of autonomy is that patients are able to participate and decide on treatments concerning their care (Edge and Groves, 2007). In other words, the patients have a voice. In the Tuskegee study, every man in the area was tested and later was put on a list that kept them from getting treatment, joining the war, and leaving town. The government doctors do not ask the men if they wanted to participate in the study. The nurse who participates in the study with the doctors is also forced to deny patient autonomy because of the government’s assumed authority over her. The doctors did not give the patients informed consent or allowed them to have a say in whether or not they wanted to stay in the study (Strait and Diianni, 2011). Because of gender and race, the nurse and black men were forced to stay in this study. Overall, this ethical principle was nonexistent. Confidentiality A basic definition of confidentiality is that information about a patient is not discussed openly (Edge and Groves, 2007). This ethical principle became an issue when the government gave medical facilities lists of people who were in the study. Again, the patients were not informed that they would not be able to …show more content…
In the case of the Tuskegee Study, there was no fairness rather superior and inferior. The men were practically locked in a cage as they were shut off from the world because they could not go off to war or able to leave the town to seek help. The government workers always tracked them down and brought them back to Tuskegee. As the men started to die, the family was given money, also know as life insurance, so they can be buried properly. In the video, one of the men who survived said that the amount of money given was not equal. He said that the insurance increased as the study went on (Strait and Diianni, 2011). That is clearly not a fair distribution of
According to Terrence F. Ackerman, as of the 1980s the American Medical Association had to include the respect for a person’s autonomy as a principle of medical ethics (Ackerman 14, 1982). This includes having the physician provide all the medical information to the patient even if the information could cause negative implication onto the patient. The physician is also expected to withhold all information of the patient from 3rd parties (Ackerman 14, 1982). Although it is seen as standard in today’s world, in
A statement in an unsigned article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, gives the prejudicial idea: “‘Virtue in the Negro race is like angels’ visits—few and far between”’ (Brandt 21). Nearly seventy years after Lincoln abolished slavery in the United States, racism and prejudice still flowed through the veins of many Americans and their views corrupted medical research studies with bribery, prejudice, and flagrant disregard for ethics, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis case in 1932. This blatant disrespect for African-American life left only seventy-four men alive of the three hundred and ninety-nine men who participated in the study. These men were chosen as research subjects solely on the color of their skin and that they were a “notoriously syphilis soaked race” (Skloot 50).
A multitude of medical ethics were broken during the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, including lack of informed consent, withholding treatment, and deception. “The study was conducted without the benefit of patients’ informed consent” (CDC). “They were led to believe they were receiving free medical care, when its
A multitude of medical ethics were broken during the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, including lack of informed consent, withholding treatment, and deception. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “The study was conducted without the benefit of patients’ informed consent.” Also, Yoon shed insight
The Tuskegee Study, as exampled in the film “Miss Evers’ Boys,” was a horrendous example of the result of racism, a vulnerable population, and the manipulation of people not given the proper dignity they deserved, to benefit the majority class (Woodard). According to the film, in this study a whole community of African Americans went decades with identified cases of syphilis, being given placebo interventions and unjustifiably told that a later recognized intervention of penicillin shots were too risky for their use. Why would they do this? To gain knowledge; and they viewed the study as a “pure” scientific experiment, a human trial that would likely never be acceptable to have been conducted on Whites of the time, and under the full knowledge and aid of the U.S. government (Woodard, “Miss Evers’ Boys”).
Autonomy was a huge part in this study; the patients could not make the decisions, only the doctors. There were 600 black men that were conducted in the study, that had no education and had no idea what was going on. If they were educated enough to ask questions about what was going on they would be able to make their own decisions and treatments that they wanted. It was the practice for doctors to make decisions for patients. Miss Evers’ encouraged the patients to trust the doctors because they knew what was best. The doctors deliberately neglected to tell the patients of the transition from treatment to no treatment believing “they won’t know the difference.” Doctors consistently withheld information from the patients. The ...
Medical research in the United States has a disgraceful history of exploitative studies in which African Americans were targets of abuse in the name of medical and scientific progress. African Americans have been used as the testing ground for drugs, treatments, and procedures since the time of slavery. The tolerance of the human frame and the endurance of the soul have been pushed to the limit in many of these experiments. From the physical demands on plantation work and the torturous treatment of slavery to the mental anguish inflicted on a slave’s soul by their masters, blacks have received deplorable treatment sanctioned by a white society. The end of slavery and the ushering in of the twenty first century did not end the torturous treatment and mental abuse. African Americans have been used for medical experimentation without consent for decades. Ironically they are treated as inferior and often given fewer rights than others, but amazingly their cells and bodies are treated as equals in laboratories for medical research, the results of which can save, extend and enhance the lives of others. Although color lines that are drawn in many aspects of life and inequitable treatment doled out based on the depth of the color of one’s skin, actually astounding results from medical experimentation on African Americans has produced drugs, cures and treatments for even those who do not value people of color, leaving the question of ethics and equity hanging in the balance.
Without patient confidentiality, patients would not be willing to tell about themselves or their family member for fear of it getting out (tTelegraph). If they were asked
Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political, and bioethical reasoning. Inside these connections, it is the limit of a sound individual to make an educated, unpressured decision. Patient autonomy can conflict with clinician autonomy and, in such a clash of values, it is not obvious which should prevail. (Lantos, Matlock & Wendler, 2011). In order to gain informed consent, a patient
As stated in the previous quote, confidentiality is an important concept in medicine and many other different professions. In technical terms, confidentiality is the right of an individual to have personal, medical information kept private (p. 62). It is especially important in the health care profession because as a health care professional, individuals are responsible with the personal information of their clients and are obligated to keep that information from those who it does not concern.
right to access knowledge about their health, even if it means revealing the identity of
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which aimed to figure out at long-term effects of untreated syphilis by studying 400 African American men who had the disease, began in 1932 . The study took place over several decades without any intervention despite the rise in Penicillin as a treatment in the 1950s . If administered, the medication could have saved the subjects from a great deal of pain and suffering. None of this information came to light until the 1970s when the study was published and despite the obvious ethical oversights, even when an investigation was opened, important questions of the researchers were never asked and documents that would have exposed the problems with the study were never pursued . The case is particularly egregious when analyzed through the lens of Emmanuel Kant’s ethics philosophy. Due to Kant’s focus on the concept of the Categorical Imperative, which postulates that for an action to be considered moral it must be universally moral, Kant would consider the Tuskegee case to be unethical because of the blatant dishonesty, lack of informed consent, and withholding of
Sankor, P., Mora, S., Merz, J., Jones, N. (2003). “Patient Perspectives of Medical Confidentiality”. NCBI. J Gen Intern Med. Aug 2003; 18(8): 659–669.doi: 10.1046/j.1525-1497.2003.20823.x. Retrieved May 14, 2014 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1494903//
Doctor patient confidentiality, is a fundamental element of the practice of medicine. Patients can expect that doctors and their support staff will hold confidential information about them in confidence, unless the release of the information is required by law or for public interest reasons. Ensuring confidentiality is retained allows doctors to examine their patients and receive all relevant information about their condition without a worry of judgement or sharing of the information.
According to Lockwood (2005), confidentiality could be viewed as information that a doctor learns about a patient should not be divulged