The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male is also known as the Tuskegee study exemplifies the horrors and realities of administrative evil, dehumanization, and moral inversion. In 1932, the U.S Public Health Service experimented on 399 African American men in Macon, Alabama, to study the long term and life threatening effects of untreated syphilis. The PHS doctors withheld important medical information, details of the study, and its true purpose from the men; thereby making it impossible for them to give informed consent. Also, they were not given the choice whether to participate in the experiment or receive treatment for the illness once penicillin was discovered in 1947; 15 years after the study commenced. Despite the nature The PHS doctors dehumanized the men and their families by “depriving them of their humanity, rendering them worthless by exercising the psychological process of dehumanization” (Adams & Balfour, 2009, pg. 18). The men’s social status made it easy the doctors to commit such evil. Moreover, the PHS doctors felt as if they did nothing wrong and that they were fulfilling their duties without accepting personal responsibility (Adams & Balfour, 2009, pg.4). Deeply rooted administrative evil encouraged this outrageous experiment in the name of They intended to use their students to demonstrate how easy it is for individuals to comply with roles that cause destructive behavior and harm to others (Adam & Balfour, 2009, pg.25). They selected 22 “normal” male undergraduates to participate in the mock prison set up in the university’s basement. Prisoner and guards were evenly split, with backups. Zimbardo was motivated to answer why brutality was so common between guards and prisoners in American prisons. Could individuals be internally motivated to behave destructively towards others? Or is it the situation or environment of the prison to blame? Surprisingly, the participants of the study effortlessly conformed to their roles. Guards displayed aggressive behavior towards the prisoners, while the “normal” prisoners quickly suffered psychological damage from the inhumane treatment, and had to be released early in the study. Zimbardo came to realize the power of social roles, despite our culture of individualism. Like the Tuskegee experiment, prisoners were dehumanized (but in another form) and quickly showed signs of submissiveness, while they harbored strong feelings of hate towards the guards. The manner in which the experiment was carried out has received some ethical criticism. Although Zimbardo and his colleagues could not foresee the potential psychological damage done to the subjects, they should have ended the study
Based on the video Deadly Deception the following essay will analyze and summarize the information presented from the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment. The legal medical experimentation of human participant must follow the regulation of informed consent, debrief, protection of participants, deception or withdrawal from the investigation, and confidentiality; whether, this conducted experiment was legitimate, for decades, is under question.
Before the Tuskegee Experiment in 1926, there was a major health problem and it was syphilis. Then in 1932 the Tuskegee experiment begins. The research took place in the city of Tuskegee, Macon County, Alabama. Where poverty and no opportunity was the main problem for African-
Twenty-four average men were entered into a fake prison setting, twelve of which who had been given the role of prisoner and twelve with the role of guard. Throughout the course of the experiment we see the environment effect negatively on the actions of the group of guards, clearly demonstrating that situational forces can force a person to cross the line between good and evil. We see this heavily embodied in the guard Dave Eshelman AKA ‘John Wayne’ – nicknamed by the prisoners in the study – the most brutal guard of them all, the one who demonstrated all the findings on the influence of power and authority and human behaviour. “I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, “How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, ‘knock it off?'” But the other guards didn’t stop me.
He “wanted to be sure to simulate a real prison experiment.” (Zimbardo, 5th paragraph) This reveals that within the fake prison environment, it created a deindividuation adjacent to the loss of self-awareness of one's self and self-restraint in a definite group, for the guards.
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment lasted for 30 years before the unethical practice was officially brought to a halt, during that time, the concept of bad blood was used to prolong the involvement of test subjects. Participants infected with syphilis where given fabricated stories that kept them uninformed, making cooperation easier. Lies stretched from being told their blood was bad, to nurses giving them placebo cures. Both were in efforts to either keep blacks uninformed, or to reassure those informed that they were safe. Treasure Island authorities seem to have duplicated the same tactics, and tailor them to radiation. Years after radiation test were complete and questions started to arise, officials started to deny radiation was discovered on the Island. In a Bay Area NBC interview, Treasure Island’s director said, “TIDA director Robert Beck denied that there is evidence of any radiological material being buried where people are currently living. He has continually defended the Navy’s position” (NBC Bay Area). Like Tuskegee, prominent officials denied the severity of the problem to lengthen the case. After given extensive evidence that death was an inevitable outcome, authoritative figures in both situations denied indisputable data. For those who were aware of illness, Eunice Rivers told them they had bad blood, and prescribed/injected a placebo solution. On Treasure Island, residents who were diagnosed with cancer were lied to, and given what can be seen as a
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...
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Untreated Male Negros made a distinct impact on the history of research. The study began in Mason County, Alabama in 1932 at the Tuskegee Institute. The goal was to learn about syphilis, and how the disease progressed with an emphasis on uneducated and illiterate African American males (Tuskegee University, n.d). There were 600 participants involved; 399 with documented cases of syphilis, and 201 control group members without syphilis (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013). Researchers informed the participants that they had “bad blood,” never informing them that they were infected with syphilis (Tuskegee University, n.d). To encourage the men to participate in the study they provided free medical care, transportation, meals on the days they were being examined, and burial insurance (Tuskegee University, n.d). When the study began no reliable treatments were available.
The ideas of social psychology mentioned above can be applied to the Stanford Prison Experiment; in which the environment, the participants, and construals brought about behaviors that may not have been how the participants actually would behave in real life.
To begin the experiment the Stanford Psychology department interviewed middle class, white males that were both physically and mentally healthy to pick 18 participants. It was decided who would play guards and who would be prisoners by the flip of a coin making nine guards and nine prisoners. The guards were taken in first to be told of what they could and could not do to the prisoners. The rules were guards weren’t allowed t o physically harm the prisoners and could only keep prisoners in “the hole” for a hour at a time. Given military like uniforms, whistles, and billy clubs the guards looked almost as if they worked in a real prison. As for the prisoners, real police surprised them at their homes and arrested them outside where others could see as if they were really criminals. They were then blindfolded and taken to the mock prison in the basement of a Stanford Psychology building that had been decorated to look like a prison where guards fingerprinted, deloused, and gave prisoners a number which they would be calle...
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 U.S. Public Health Service conducted this new experiment study which consisted of 399 men with syphilis and 201 men without syphilis for forty years, from 1932 to 1972. There was a total of six hundred men who participated in this study. In 1932, the Public Health Service collaborated with the Tuskegee Institute, an African American university which was founded by Booker T. Washington. The men that were chosen for this study were illiterate and were sharecroppers from Alabama. The syphilis rate in Macon County was the highest with a 39.8%. The Tuskegee study became morally and ethically wrong when penicillin became available to treat syphilis and was denied to the participants of the study. The study broke many ethical rules. The participants were told that if they participated, they were going to receive free medical care for their “bad blood.” The men were never informed what they were actually being treated for. Unfortunately, these men accepted because they were getting free healthcare and that is what they desired since they were very poor.
When put into an authoritative position over others, is it possible to claim that with this new power individual(s) would be fair and ethical or could it be said that ones true colors would show? A group of researchers, headed by Stanford University psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo, designed and executed an unusual experiment that used a mock prison setting, with college students role-playing either as prisoners or guards to test the power of the social situation to determine psychological effects and behavior (1971). The experiment simulated a real life scenario of William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies” showing a decay and failure of traditional rules and morals; distracting exactly how people should behave toward one another. This research, known more commonly now as the Stanford prison experiment, has become a classic demonstration of situational power to influence individualistic perspectives, ethics, and behavior. Later it is discovered that the results presented from the research became so extreme, instantaneous and unanticipated were the transformations of character in many of the subjects that this study, planned originally to last two-weeks, had to be discontinued by the sixth day. The results of this experiment were far more cataclysmic and startling than anyone involved could have imagined. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the discoveries from Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and of Burrhus Frederic “B.F.” Skinner’s study regarding the importance of environment.
The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment (The official name was Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male) began in the 1930’s. It was an experiment on African Americans to study syphilis and how it affected the body and killed its victims done by Tuskegee Institute U.S. Public Health Service researchers. The initial purpose of the Syphilis study “was to record the natural history of syphilis in Blacks” (Tuskegee University, “About the USPHS Syphilis Study,” par. 2). The study was necessary because syphilis was a disease that didn’t yet have an official cure (when the study began in the 30’s). There were 600 men in all; 399 had syphilis and 201 served as a control group for the experiment. The subjects lacked money and education to understand what exactly was going on and couldn’t give informed consent ,but “the researchers offered incentives: free physical exams, hot meals, and rides into town on clinic days, plus fifty-dollar burial stipends for their families when the men died” (50). Therefore, they didn’t question the doctors about what they were doing. During the experiment on the hundreds of African Americans, the doctors found out that they could cure them with penicillin. However, the doctors choose not to cure them in order to study how syphilis killed people and many of the subjects had, indeed, died. Later, in the 1970’s, an article was released which sparked rumors about the southern doctors injecting the men with syphilis, rather them already having it. The government put an end to the study in the early 1970’s. The experiment affected medical history because it helped lead to the creation of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical an...
The book BAD BLOOD: THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT by James H. Jones was a very powerful compilation of years of astounding research, numerous interviews, and some very interesting positions on the ethical and moral issues associated with the study of human beings under the Public Health Service (PHS). "The Tuskegee study had nothing to do with treatment it was a nontherapeutic experiment, aimed at compiling data on the effects of the spontaneous evolution of syphilis in black males" (Jones pg. 2). Jones is very opinionated throughout the book; however, he carefully documents the foundation of those opinions with quotes from letters and medical journals. The book allowed the reader to see the experiment from different viewpoints. This was remarkable because of the initial feelings the reader has when first hearing of the experiment. In the beginning of the book, the reader will see clearly there has been wrong doing in this experiment, but somehow, Jones will transform you into asking yourself, "How could this happen for so long?"
The ideas of social psychology mentioned above can be applied to the Stanford Prison Experiment; in which the environment, the participants, and construals brought about behaviors that may not have been how the participants actually would behave in real life.