The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

In response to the horrific and disgusting acts of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, measures were put into place in order to prevent of a another disastrous incident from repeating. It was a political embarrassment to the government. The governing system at the time allowed the experiment to continue for decades before it was exposed to the public.Human subjects in the experiment were manipulated and exploited. It failed to protect its people and turned a blind eye to any unethical proceedings that took place during the experiment. As a result, the National Research Act of 1974 was proposed and signed into law on July 12, 1974.. The purpose of the National Research Act was to assure ethical procedures pertaining to biomedical and behavioral

The first principle highlighted the point of respect to persons meaning that each person has freewill and is given the choice to participate in a study or not. Also, if the person is incapacitated of making their own decisions, they require protection. In the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, researchers prevented any person part of the study the option to withdraw. The second principle of the Belmont Report is beneficence meaning do no harm. Specifically, no physical or psychological harm will come to the human subjects participating in a study. Additionally, this point protects against loss of confidentiality and deception. Within the decades the Tuskegee Experiment lasted, participants were subjected to medical procedures that required them to endure massive amount of pain at one time. Because participants were barred from administration of the penicillin , they suffered for years of syphilis symptoms. Many of the human subjects transmitted the disease to their families, wives and children. On the course of the study, the researchers even allowed the death of some of the participants. Lastly, the third Belmont principle is justice. Justice in this sense meaning that there must be an equal selection of participants for the research that does not disadvantage another group, all participants must share equal risks and benefits of the research. The Tuskegee Experiment solely targeted African American men,

In accordance of the act, the infrastructure of policies and procedures for the approval of human experimentation had to be remodeled among Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). Federal policy regarding human testing have been based on decentralized and institutional responsibility since the passing of the act. Individual IRBs choose their own members and create their own procedures. IRBs are faced with a larger workload and causes some researchers to pursue independent work free from their institutional affiliation. There is also the issue of time consumption regarding the review of each and every detail of proposed human experiments. It is the responsibility of IRBs to consider the ethical circumstances of each proposed experiment. There are issues concerning abstract values which can be unique to individual IRBs. There is difficulty in establishing unity among IRBs for guidelines regarding which experiments are ethical and