ipl-logo

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

1572 Words7 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Tuskegee Experiment: The Infamous Syphilis Study

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: compliance with the American Psychological Association’s ethical principles for research with the human participants. Roman Yakubov Hudson County Community College Research that involves human participants raises a lot of ethical questions and concerns. Ethics refers to the norms or principles that generally guide any research as well as whether research activities are conducted the right or the wrong way. Additionally, ethics are the moral principles that govern the behavioral component when a certain activity is conducted, in this case the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (citation?). In summary, the Tuskegee Study is a medical research that was conducted over an extensive period of time from …show more content…

Researchers of the Tuskegee study clearly targeted and capitalized on a group of participants who did not have sufficient education and did not have a good socioeconomic standing to make a knowledgeable decision whether to participate in the study or not. Education on its own is one of the crucial aspects for individuals to make knowledgeable and educated decisions. The lack of either standard created a perfect setting for researchers to exploit the low social standing of the African- Americans men in the Tuskegee study. In addition, African-American men were coerced and misled to participate by promises of incentives such as “free lunches, transportation and medical care” (ref. Tuskegee Study article). Consequently, patients did not have a proper informed consent or the required to skills or tools to make an educated decision to either continue with the research or to quit. The study went to great extent to prevent its participants from actually obtaining information about the purpose of the study and treatment when it became available. One of the examples in the study paper explains how the draft during World War II was abandoned specifically as it related to the Tuskegee participants. (cite) Patients were misled by coercion into accepting participation without a choice to make an educated decision to continue with the study that provided no …show more content…

It was one of the longest study that had the backing of the United States Public Health Services (USPHS). In conclusion, even though the article talks about the group of males’ participations at free will, the experiment on African- American males was one of the cruelest that lacked diversity and was full of coercion and violated many APA ethical principles as well as simply impeded on the rights of human beings by withholding the available treatment to

Show More
Related
1631 Words | 7 Pages

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.

Read More
951 Words | 4 Pages

The program would prove to be one of the most horrendous experiments in the history of modern medicine. The Tuskegee Syphilis study was initiated by the U.S. Public Health Services (PHS). It was an experiment to study the natural course of untreated syphilis in black males. The goal was to see

Read More
1259 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
228 Words | 1 Pages

The first ethical principle the Tuskegee study violated is known as informed consent. The victims were not made fully aware of the potential risk and harm that they were subjected to during the duration of the study. In addition, by luring in victims with the promise of receiving proper medical treatment and then deceiving them did not in anyway shape or form promote the well being of the subjects. Instead, as the video stated victims were subjected to dangerous diagnostics procedures and given ineffective treatment. Information and treatment options were withheld from the subject at great lengths.

Read More
546 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
520 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
494 Words | 2 Pages

The Project Camelot study and the Murray Center Experiments were two research projects conducted in the 1960s that encountered significant ethical challenges. While both studies had different objectives and methodologies, they share common ethical issues, including issues of informed consent, confidentiality, and the use of deception and psychological stressors in research. This essay will compare and critically evaluate the ethical challenges and strategies used in these studies. In terms of informed consent, both studies encountered challenges.

Read More
1432 Words | 6 Pages

Trevor Sommer Redtails (2012) Director: Anthony Hemingway Main Actors: Terrence Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr., Nate Parker, David Oyelowo The Truth: Prior to the FEPC, which prohibited discrimination in the military, African Americans weren’t allowed to pilot air craft for the United States military. After the FEPC was created the Air Force established a segregated all-African American pursuit squadron based out of Tuskegee, Alabama in what was known as the “Tuskegee experiment”. The purpose of the “experiment” was determine whether or not African Americans had the ability to fly and maintain combat aircraft. The men who served in this squadron were known as the Tuskegee airmen. Throughout WWII the Tuskegee airmen gained respect for their flying

Read More
886 Words | 4 Pages

Once the issues of human experimentation without consent, and often even with no defined outcome goal got a taste of the spotlight, the conditions under which medicine would be practiced started to change for the better (Rothman, 1991). The decisions made by the physicians began to improve and become monitored, and everything was becoming much more professional and official (Rothman, 1991). Physicians started to understand the terrible positions and conditions to which they had submitted the black slaves and the Jewish

Read More
1519 Words | 7 Pages

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.

Read More
1686 Words | 7 Pages

The research involved six hundred African-American men, four hundred of whom were injected with syphilis (Field, 2004). They were later monitored for forty years till 1972. Although a confirmed cure became accessible in the 1950s, the research was prolonged up to 1972 with partakers being deprived of treatment. After the death of many subjects, the research was stopped in 1973 due to mounting pressure from the public. Declaration of Helsinki

Read More
1049 Words | 5 Pages

These deep-rooted suspicions are historically linked to inequality and social mistrust. For example, in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, a clinical trial on African-American men who were denied proper treatment, are key underlying factors for African-Americans distrust of medical and public health involvement, including

Read More
3876 Words | 16 Pages

“Despite the compelling need for tests on human subjects and the resulting benefits for mankind, human experimentation has drawn considerable criticism. Particularly controversial has been the use of human subjects for research that does not specifically entail the benefit of the subject. This is termed non-therapeutic experimentation. Its most grotesque form occurred during the World War II in the well-documented “experiments” conducted by the Nazis on prisoners in concentration camps. At least 26 different types of experiments were conducted for the explicit purpose of gaining medical and scientific information, with the larger goal of benefiting the German people and race.

Read More
1121 Words | 5 Pages

The tem ethics refers to the moral principles that guide a person’s behavior, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of their actions. In the field of nursing, these moral principles govern the relationship between the nurse and the patient, members of the healthcare team, and society at large. Nurses must constantly question whether a certain procedure or course of treatment is in the best interest of the patient. When viewing the film “Miss Evers’ Boys”, it was clear that the doctors, researchers, and even Miss Evers were not acting in the best interest of all the patients. This movie depicted true events of a study that took place in Macon County, Alabama, in 1932.

Read More
877 Words | 4 Pages

The purpose of this research was to study the effects of syphilis on the human body if it went untreated. The main group of test subjects was 600 men of color, 399 of which had the disease, and 201 to be used as a control. The men were never informed of the purpose of the research and were lured into the study under the guise of free blood tests and treatment. Although at the start of the research there was no effective cure for the disease, the men were left untreated even after penicillin was discovered as the miracle cure for bacterial infections. In summary, doctors failed to treat sick patients in order to study a curable disease run its

Read More

More about The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

Open Document