The Tuskegee Study: Ethical Dilemmas

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Ethics are very important in any given organization and their importance in the medical field cannot be overemphasized. Dealing with human life is critical and therefore one needs to maintain the highest level of ethics in the medical field. In some cases, medical practitioners can be termed to be ethical when they violate some of their requirements. The Tuskegee study that was conducted between 1930 and 1972 was one of those cases. The study which was conducted in Macon County, in Alabama. The movie created from this real life event was created to show the violation of ethical principles as well as human rights of the people that were involved in the study. Ethical Principles There are three principles of ethics that are to be employed when it comes to any given research. The principles are respect for persons, justice, and beneficence. …show more content…

She was an African-American and her role in the study was to recruit the 399 African-American men that were infected with syphilis so that they could be used as subjects. She was also to ensure that as much as the men went untreated, they remained as part of the program and this, therefore, meant that her role, in this case, was to convince them to stay in the experiment. There were various ethical conflicts that were faced in the Tuskegee study. One was the fact that the people selected were of the same race and gender and were of poor economic background. The other was that the people were being lied to about their disease and therefore were not being correctly treated. She went along with the conflicts because it is clear from the movie that being African-American made the men trust her. The fact that she was female and also gave the men that she wanted to be participants special treatment as well as went ahead to invite them to the “Miss Rivers’ Lodge” gave her an upper hand. Researchers' Behavior in Tuskegee Study Compared to Present Day