Ethical Issues Surrounding The Tuskegee Experiment

In a time of racism, physicians questioned the natural course and treatment of syphilis. Especially “around 1929, six counties in America had high rates of syphilis—above 20 percent—…In 1930, this foundation surveyed African-American men in Macon Country, Alabama, where Tuskegee is the chief town” (Pence, 192). Tuskegee had one of the highest rates of syphilis in the U.S. and happened to inhibit a majority of black citizens. This unfortunate combination of racism, curiosity in syphilis and the start of the Great Depression led to U.S. Public Health Service to victimize the African American Males who would later be involved what would be known as the Tuskegee Study. Another important thing to note, around the time that the study began in 1932,

For starters, the patients were never fully informed of the study so were not able to give informed consent. Not only were they left in the dark about the study and what was wrong with them, they were also lied to on multiple occasions. They were lied to about what was wrong with them, the purpose of the study, etc. Especially when penicillin became the official treatment for the syphilis the fact that this information was withheld from the patients and that the researchers sneakily informed other clinics not to treat those patients is the biggest ethical issue of this experiment. As medical professionals and researchers, the ultimate goal should be to do everything to help patients. However, in this study they proved that the results of this study were held to a higher value than the patients’ own lives. It is astonishing that people in a profession intended to help people, were able to sit back and watch people die when they knew that there was something they could have done to save

It violated Deontological Ethics because it did not emphasis moral duties and the people in charge of the experiment did not have patients’ well-being as a main concern. It violates the Categorical Imperative because this theory’s main principle treat others as ends and not means only, which is the exact opposite of what the researchers and physicians did in this study. They did not treat the patients with value that all human beings are owed and abused their power as officials. They treated valuable human beings as a means of research. Finally, in terms of Consequentialism and Utilitarianism, I think the researchers used this theory for justifying their research. I think that they somehow thought that at the end of the study they would have more information on syphilis that would be able to help a larger population of people. With this theory, it would make sense because they could see a greater good for a greater number of people than the 600 human beings. The only problem with researchers justifying their actions through Consequentialism and Utilitarianism, is what could have been their reasoning for continuing the study once penicillin was varied as the official cure for syphilis? Was their curiosity more important than their morals and other people’s lives? Or were they just too far in the study to stop