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The tuskegee syphilis experiment research essay
The tuskegee syphilis experiment research essay
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The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, better known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was a conducted clinical experiment created in 1932 by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the effects of untreated syphilis on 399 black men. The study severally affected hundreds of black families for 40 years. Many scientist and doctors have tried to justify the unethical reasoning for why the study was done to so many innocent people. I think that the overall reason was because the experiment could be kept under the radar if black lives were affected instead of white lives. From the very start of the experiment, the doctors knew the outcome syphilis would have on those men and they didn’t see any harm being done. “Syphilis is a highly contagious disease caused by the Treponema pallidum, a delicate bacterium that is microscopic in size and resembles a corkscrew in shape. The disease may be acquired or congenital. In acquired syphilis, the spirochete (as the Treponema pallidum is also called) enters the body through the skin or mucous membrane, usually during sexual intercourse, though infection may also occur …show more content…
“We have no further interest in these patients until they die,” one of the doctors involved explained. Even after the experiment was over one of the doctors concluded that no new information was found about syphilis stating, “nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States.” The experiment ended in 1972 with 74 survivors still alive. The experiment ended because a reporter named Jean Heller caused an outcry with the public by releasing an article about the experiment. After the information was brought to the public’s attention, attorney Fred Gray filed a $10 million lawsuit for the victims of the
Ethical violations committed on underprivileged populations first surfaced close to 50 years ago with the discovery of the Tuskegee project. The location, a small rural town in Arkansas, and the population, consisting of black males with syphilis, would become a startling example of research gone wrong. The participants of the study were denied the available treatment in order further the goal of the research, a clear violation of the Belmont Report principle of beneficence. This same problem faces researchers today who looking for an intervention in the vertical transmission of HIV in Africa, as there is an effective protocol in industrialized nations, yet they chose to use a placebo-contro...
Nurse Eunice Evers, the nurse in the Tuskegee syphilis study, played a main role in the experiment. Being a black minority from the south, Miss Rivers, could empathize with the men. In fact, she was the person who recruited many of the men for the study. Nurse Rivers acted as a liaison between the Researchers and the men. She was able to communicate with the men in terms they understood, to ease, and convince them to participate in the study. Nurse Rivers can be described as caring,manipulative and a fool. She was caring because she did care for the men to some extent. When the study first began Miss Rivers truly thought she was part of something bigger, the treatment of syphilitic black men. However, when she finds out the men will not be
Set back in 1932 Macon County, Alabama the Tuskegee Experiment was established by the U.S. Government and tested only amongst African Americans or in this case the “negro” population of who would test positive for syphilis. The United States Government concerned about the widespread of “negro” disease to the white populations implemented several Negro programs such as the Tuskegee Experiment. They studied how untreated syphilis reacts to the Negro body compared to the white mans. Many people believed that African Americans high death rate and frequency of diseases was biological proof that they were inferior to the whites. 400 men were selected for the treatment believing they were being given medication to help save their lives but in reality the truth was withheld allowing these men to die overtime. The only treatment given was spinal taps, blood tests, x-rays, placebos and liniments rather than mercury and penicillin. It is an extraordinary movie both emotional and powerful in context considering the realism of the situation at hand.
When penicillin was discovered in 1940 and was the only cure for syphilis at that time. The participants form Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment were excluded from many campaigns that were taking place in Macon County, Alabama to eliminate venereal diseases (Person Education, 2007). This experiment lasted forty years and by the end 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis (info please, 2007). The directors of this experiment used ethical, interpersona... ... middle of paper ... ...
In a world where public health has only recently been widened to incorporate global health and epidemiology, there is still distrust among society based on previous ethical misconduct in the field of health research. The article about the Tuskegee provided insight into some of the ethical misconduct in research related to HIV/AIDS and STIs. These men freely agreed to participate in the study, but were not given information related to the study’s purpose. In addition, the study was only supposed to last six months, and ended up going on for 40 years. Throughout this long study, there was no evidence to prove whether or not the participants were given the chance to leave the study. This ethical misconduct led to some mistrust in researchers and
The purpose of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was to observe syphilis when left untreated in black men. Although the intentions were benevolent at the beginning of the study, many began to express concerns that the study was unethical. Throughout the study subjects were not informed of the true purpose of the study, but were lied to and told it was to observe bad blood. Although it was seemingly unethical, this allowed for the results of the study to remain unaltered by the subjects which avoided any falsified documentation. Despite deceiving the subjects having an advantage, it also raised many questions among the community as to whether the intentions of the study were justifiable. In fact, the study angered not only the United States as a whole,
Bad blood is a book that was written James H. Jones who is an associate professor of History. The book narrates on how the government through the department of Public Health service (PHS) authorized and financed a program that did not protect human values and rights. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment which was conducted between 1932 and 1972 where four hundred illiterate and semi-illiterate black sharecroppers in Alabama recently diagnosed with syphilis were sampled for an experiment that was funded by the U.S Health Service to prove that the effect of untreated syphilis are different in blacks as opposed to whites. The blacks in Macon County, Alabama were turned into laboratory animals without their knowledge and the purpose of the experiment
The men in this study were from Macon County, in 1932, who lived in poverty and had likely never been treated for any reason by a medical doctor. The nick name “bad blood” came from the doctors stating that they were testing people for “bad blood”. Thirty-six percent of the African American population in Macon County, tested positive for syphilis. Many of these men agreed to be a part of a control study for syphilis. With funding being discontinued for this study to continue the study was transformed into the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis. The African American participants were not informed that the study had changed to a non-therapeutic study (Fourtner, Fourtner, & Herreid, 2000).
The Government and Politicians didn’t really care. Most of them ignore it and waited for the last minute. Others, like the President Ronald Regan spent more money on war supplies and other stuff, than helping the CDC find a cure. They were only given a certain limited space, no money, and outdated equipment.
I was appalled and disgusted at the treatment meted out to the Tuskegee men. The movie was an excellent portrayal of racism and how expendable people of color were in the past, and I felt demoralized when I realized that it was based on a true story. I could not hold back my tears and had to pause the movie several times to get my emotions in check. My thought is, the study was inhumane and could be likened to genocide. The ethical principle of utilitarianism was misused by the doctors and Miss Evers, and though, the participants had given their consent, however, it was more or less a coercion coated with lies.
There was no good outcome from doing the Tuskegee study. The government has to pay to the damage that was caused. The Tuskegee study went on for 40 years without any benefit for the black community. With the second theory the researcher were wrong in doing the study. According to Burkhardt”(2014) define deontology as “of ethics based upon the rationalist view that the rightness or wrongness of an act depend upon the nature of the act, rather than its consequence”(p.44).based on this theory doing the research were wrong. They did not tell them why the study is conducting, they did not tell them the risk and benefit of the research, and they withheld the only treatments available to continue their study with human
During the medical experiments not a lot of things came from it. One experiment lead to the the cure for yellow fever. The other experiments didn’t seem to be useful, they were just crazy ideas that they thought they needed to know. They were just part of the killing of millions of Jews that science didn’t find
The Tuskegee Experiment Study has many parts to it and how they gained their research and results. There were also some ethically unjustified and denied treatments for them to obtain their results. As they gain the knowledge they was looking for, some of the information was misdiagnosed because of the prejudice and their feelings towards the black men make so information wrong.
As a result, researchers did not inform these men about the actual name of the study or what it was for. Not to mention, the Tuskegee Study of the untreated Syphilis in the Negro male also failed to explain the its purpose and life potential consequences due to the treatment or non-treatment that they would receive during the experiment. As a result, the men never knew of the life threatening consequences of the treatments they were receiving and the impact that this left on their wives and possible children they may conceive once they were involved in the research of Syphilis. According to the CDC, there was 12 million people who were infected with the STD in
...ces about “the natural progression of syphilis”. The experiment on “collecting data” was exposing by “The New York Times” during 1972. Originally the research was only supposed to last for a few months, however the data was very important to the physician therefore they continued the experiment. However in 1940 the researcher refused to provided penicillin to the men. The main purpose of this research was to collect data, the individual was chosen to participates are mainly not educated and they do not have a good condition of living. These men are from the state of Alabama, in the city of Tuskegee. The researcher refused to provide “penicillin” treatment for the men. This action represent unethical to the individual being observed. Even those they are not harming the individual, but withheld treatment when is available is considered unethical for the researcher.