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Essay On The Tuskegee Experiment

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What was the Tuskegee experiment? This experiment was one that used hundreds of poor, African- American men that had syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection, but the men didn’t know they had it. This started in 1932 and lasted for 40 years. When the study was started, there was no known cure for the infection. Eventually, in the 1940’s scientists discovered a drug that would cure the infection, called Penicillin. However, even though scientists had discovered that penicillin was a cure for syphilis, they still continued to tell the men they just had “bad blood” and gave them placebos. As the men started to die or develop some uncomfortable symptoms of the infection, researchers did not provide any care that would help them heal or even feel …show more content…

(Nix, History.com) The superiors decided to form a committee to evaluate what was going on in the study. The conclusion was that the researchers were allowed to continue the study so they could track all of the men until they have all died. Another reason this study was so unethical is because people outside of the study knew what was going on and didn’t stop them. According to cdc.gov, local African American and white physicians were recruited not to treat the men. Autopsy and physician assessments were done at local hospitals. This means a bunch of Tuskegee Institute faculty and staff were involved in the study. The fact that these doctors knew what was going on and didn’t do anything to stop the situation means they were not respecting their rights to be doctors, if you ask me. A doctor is obligated to help anyone they can and these doctors just turned their heads and looked the other way. Though this is one of the reasons the study was unethical, the main reason became known in 1940 when penicillin was discovered to cure syphilis and the researchers still did not offer the medicine to the test

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