Ethical Issues In Penicillin Research Purposes

The first major ethical issue to be considered, which refers to telling potential research participants about all aspects of the research that might reasonably influence their decision to participate, is informed consent. The possibility that a person might feel pressured to agree or might not understand precisely what he or she is agreeing to is another concern. The participants had experienced low levels of care, which the investigators took advantage of a deprived socioeconomic situation.
It was never explained to the subjects that the survey was designed to detect syphilis and in recruiting subjects for the study, the USPHS practiced deception. Subjects were never told they had syphilis and the term “bad blood,” which was a local colloquialism for everything from anemia to leukemia, was used by the doctors and never defined for the subjects. The treatment presented consisted of spinal taps, which were described as “spinal shots” (Heintzelman, 1995).
Although there have been multiple attempts to justify why penicillin treatment was withheld, patient welfare was consistently overlooked. Other physicians felt that the damage that could result from reactions to the penicillin therapy, including fever, angina, and ruptured blood vessels, would outweigh its benefits while the others felt that repair of existing damage would be minimal. No data was available on the efficiency of penicillin treatment in late syphilis, and short- and long-term toxic effects of drugs had not been well documented at the time of the Tuskegee Study. Researchers judged that the benefits of non-treatment outweighed the benefits of treatment when the study was evaluated periodically. The subjects were prevented from getting treatment and were never given a choice about continuing in the study once penicillin had become