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Essay On The Tuskegee Study

1361 Words6 Pages

In the year of 1932, in a small town in Alabama called Macon County began a study that was lead by the U.S Public Health Services (PHC) to study the development of untreated syphilis. The U.S Public Health Services gathered 399, African American men that were in the late stage of syphilis. The study also gathered 201 African American men who were free of the disease chosen to serve as controls. The total number of African American men in the study was 600 victims. Throughout the study many illegal things happened and the victims were not given the full truth of what was happening and what was going to happen. None of the men knew that they had syphilis in their veins and how contagious it could be nor the men understood how the disease was transmitted. They also didn’t even told the men about …show more content…

According to the article “The Racial Economy of Science,” states “The Tuskegee study had nothing to do with treatment. No new drugs were tested; neither was any effort made to establish the efficacy of old forms of treatments.” Moreover, the study was meant to discover the effects of syphilis on African American males due to the ignorance of white physicians in the 1930s. Many of the white physicians involved in the study were convinced that syphilis was a black disease and that it was more common among Blacks than Whites. With this in mind, most people wonder why did the men cooperate with the study? For this reason, the Public Health Service offered the African American men incentive like free physical examinations, free rides to and from the clinics, hot meals, free treatment for minor health problems, and a guarantee stipends would be given to them. The PHC offered this benefits to very poor African American that were very illiterate, which would be an easy target for them to do the study on the victims without knowing anything about the

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The PHS (Public Health Service) department recruited local doctors and nurses who would not treat the men with syphilis (Clinton). They had white physicians within their department administer the study (Batten). There were 400

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This experiment, conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service, was intent to study the natural progression of syphilis in African American male population. The study participants voluntarily participated in the study but the researchers did not properly inform the participants on the availability of treatment or the risks of the disease if untreated. To make the matter worse, the participants were deliberately led to believe that they were receiving treatment from the Public Health Service for free, while the actual treatment was being withheld to achieve the purpose of the research. In today’s point of view, it is surprising that even the federal agency did not respect the dignity of human rights for the sake of research. In Henrietta’s era, even the federal agency did not follow the proper informed consent procedure, and a prestigious institution like John’s Hopkins did not have any regulations or office such as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to govern their research protocols to protect human subjects and their rights.

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The John Hopkins Hospital was not the only place that violated people with color in this way. A study was done in Macon County, Alabama with black male patients who had syphilis. This study was designed to find out a history

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This chapter reviews the long-term effect the experiment had on the African American population. Specifically, it discusses the effects the experiment has on the relationships between black and the American population and health care professionals. After the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the African American population became very critical of health care professionals, therefore, they ignored the warnings given about the prevention and epidemic of AIDS. If it was not for the experiment that rightfully made black individuals not trust health care professional the rate of AIDS would have been lower, and less people would have been infected. Overall, the chapter goes to show that it is important for health care professional to be honest and transparent with patients and the population, so that a strong relationship can be formed so that there can be advances in health

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This article gives multiple examples of unethical experiments performed on Black people one being the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. For 40 years, the Black men in the study were led to believe that they were being treated for “bad blood,” but in reality, they were not given proper treatment for syphilis. The result of withholding treatment from these men led to treatable deaths and their wives and children getting infected. Another unethical experiment mentioned in Medical Experiments on African-Americans in America was the work done by James Marion Sims, who is considered The Father of American gynecology. He performed multiple procedures on black slave women without anesthesia which was available at this time.

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Around the 1900s, doctors’ experimentation on their patients that involved their consent had raised little concern. Between 1920 and 1930, Syphilis was a crucial health problem. Healthcare was offered to people who earned low incomes in the South. African Americans were normally low-income citizens in the South and they were not perceived equal to whites. They were prone to have more health problems.

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In Tuskegee, Alabama a group of men were chosen for an experiment involving the observation of how syphilis occurs in black men and its long term non-treated consequences. At the time of the experiment, the only treatment that was available was a heavy metal therapy; however, the scientists believed it was doing more harm than good. Therefore, they did not inform the men about the treatment and distracted them with basic incentives like hot meals and transportation. When penicillin, a cure for syphilis, was discovered the doctors made the decision to shield the cure away from the men. This is proof that scientists are

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The USPS did not inform the participants about the reality of the experiment, and the subjects believed that they were treated for “bad blood,” another term for syphilis. Difficulties arose in finding the subjects to participate in the experiment because the overall rate of syphilis was below the expected thirty five percent. The subjects only agreed to participate because the physicians promised them free care, but the Tuskegee Study was not about treatment since USPHS did not test any new drugs nor improve the efficacy of the old treatment. It was aimed at collecting data on the evolution of syphilis at different stages on black males. Physicians performed a series of tests and medical examination on the subjects and called for blood testing intermittently to supplement the information from clinical examinations.

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What was indeed most striking in this interview was the many instances of black people being mistreated at the hands of medical professionals. For instance, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in which the U.S. Public Health Service sponsored a study to observe the evolution of and consequences of

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The subjects who were infected with syphilis died from either heart or central nervous system problems. Blood tonics and medicines of all sorts were given to the subjects of which they have no prior knowledge about. Two ethical principles were violated by the fore-runners of the Tuskegee Study namely: the principles of non-maleficence and autonomy. The research subjects’ welfare should be the first thing to be considered rather than the researchers’ own interests. The researchers were selfish in a way that they purposely never gave these men the potential treatment for their disease which is syphilis.

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The Tuskegee study of Untreated Syphilis began in 1932, mainly designed to determine the history of untreated latent syphilis on 600 African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama. 201 out of 600 men were non-syphilitic just unknowingly involved in the study as a control group This study is known to be “the most infamous biomedical research study in the U.S history”. Most of these men had never visited a doctor and they had no idea what illness they had. All of the men agreed to be a participant thinking they were being treated for “bad blood” and plus they were given free medical care and meals.

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It has now been a quarter of a century, and yet the images and heartache that still evolve when the words "Tuskegee Syphilis Study" are brought up, still haunts people around the world and touches upon many professionals such as social workers, medical examiners, and so forth. Sometimes people hear about this disgusting human experiment in a highly visible way directed to the entire country as an example of what we as a country and people, in general, should not do. This occurred when the study first made national news in 1972, when President Clinton offered a formal apology, or when Hollywood actors star in a fictionalized television movie of the story. On the other hand the audience may become fainter: kept alive only by memories and stories told in the African American community, in queries that circulate over the world wide web and radio talk shows, or even in courses such as this one being taught by social workers, historians, sociologists, or bioethicists. This is neither the first nor the last unethical human experiment done under the human study for the medical purposes umbrella, basically stating it is ok to sacrifice a few people in the name of medical research.

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The purpose of that experiment was to understand the progression of syphilis over human body. However, the experiment involved six hundred black men, this disease infected 301 of them and

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The study would ultimately prove that everyone, no matter the color of their skin, is equal when it comes to the disease of syphilis. The intention behind manipulating the men was not for the greater good of society, but instead was for the greater good of Dr. Brodus and Miss Evers. Although the actions of Dr. Brodus and Miss Evers prove to be unethical, I also find the actions to be unprofessional. Miss Evers should have informed the men of the severity of the disease, as well as how the disease is passed from one individual to another. They failed to inform their patients of many of the risks that came along with the disease.

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In the movie “Miss Evers Boys”, Nurse Eunice Evers takes an offer to work with two doctors on a program that was federally funded to treat patients afflicted with the syphilis disease in Tuskegee Alabama. The patients were only men and they agreed to take part in it because of the free treatment. After a while the program ended and money was offered to conduct an experiment. The experiment was the study of the effects of the syphilis disease on these men, specifically African Americans, whom didn’t receive treatment. Nurse Evers finds out from doctor Brodus that the four hundred plus men along with 200 uninfected men who served as controls, will be studied and not treated.

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