Preview

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
262 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Catherine Markray psych 1ST
10/16/2013
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
The Tuskegee syphilis study was a study on untreated African American males. It was conducted in the years 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama. They tested 399 poor, illiterate black men that were denied treatment for syphilis. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis. Instead they were told they had “bad blood” and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating. In 1932 syphilis treatments were toxic and dangerous, so the goal was to see if it was better leave people with syphilis without

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    As we see in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebeca Skloot we see that was the many cases of blacks. Like Henrietta Lacks she was not treated equal to the whites, whites were lucky enough to be provided with a more privileged medical care. When blacks were left almost on the sidelines. Getting little medical help. When Henrietta lacks pasted away her family was left devastated. Skloot points out the irony of the first HeLa factory being established at the Tuskegee Institute, where black men were being exploited and allowed to die as research subjects. Rebecca Skloot states in her book The immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that, “Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white.” (p. 97) Quite a few members of Henrietta’s family later pointed out the same sarcasm, that their mother’s cells helped create vaccines and drugs. None of which were really available to her relatives, because they were too…

    • 1386 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Tuskegee, testing was being done on 200 African American men that had syphilis. These men believed they were going to be cure when they signed up for research trials. Instead they were never given a true diagnosis of what they had, instead, doctors told them they had ‘Bad Blood’. When a cure became available for syphilis they weren’t allowed to go and receive the cure…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the 1950s doctors didn't have to ask for consent and the patients just did what their doctors told them to do no questions asked. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot tells a true story about a 31 year old African American woman that had her cells taken by doctors without her consent and didn't get recognized for the contribution her cells made until later on when her family found out what the doctors had done.…

    • 917 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Introduction The “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” Consisted of 600 black males, 399 had syphilis and 201 of them did not have syphilis. Initiated in 1932, the research was conducted without the patients’ informed consent. The only remuneration these subjects received was free medical exams, free meals and burial insurance. The study was initially expected to continue for six months but actually extended for more than 40 years. (CDC, 2017)…

    • 1366 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tuskegee Airmen Succeed, Despite Odds Against Them In the beginning of World War II, the U.S. government received an enormous amount of backlash for not allowing any African Americans into the elite status of the armed forces. This lead to the “Tuskegee Experiment” which was designed to see if African Americans were fit for war. Because of this experiment, this allowed “996 pilots and more than 15,000 ground personnel” to serve on the “all-black units” that trained here at Moton Field (History.com).…

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    She elaborated that a Mississippi appendectomy is a hysterectomy performed on poor black women who had received no indication that they were going to receive this type of surgery and did not ask for the procedure to be done. Based on the research she provided, 60% of black women in Sunflower County, Mississippi were subjected to some form of sterilization without giving their consent. However, other nonconsensual procedures were also occurring in other southern…

    • 1575 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment took place in Macon County between the years 1932 and 1972. The U.S. Public Health Services teamed up with Tuskegee University to study how syphilis would advance when left untreated. A total of 600 African American were joined in the study, out of these men 399 were diseased before the study began and 201 did not have the ailment. All the participants were uninformed of what they were actually being treated for. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men believed that they were being treated for “bad blood”, which was given as a diagnosis given for anemia and fatigue as well as syphilis. They took part in the experiment with the promise of free meals, and that their…

    • 391 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was created in 1932, with many different experiments and one goal: to study the history of syphilis to get treatment for blacks. The U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) wanted to determine the natural course of untreated syphilis in black males. It’s main purpose was to justify treatment programs for everyone, no matter the color of their skin. The researchers studied the men, who were all prone to latent syphilis, and needed to determine how the syphilis will manifest in their bodies so they can provide proper treatment. The subjects consisted of 400 syphilitic men, as well as 200 uninfected men.…

    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Something very disturbing was happening to African American men in Macon County, Alabama between the years of 1932 and 1972. During this time hundreds of black men were chosen to participate in a scientific study. This study would later become known as the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study”. A study in which those black men who were selected would be infected with syphilis, to see the effects would be on them compared to white males. This study is also one of the most controversial and disgraceful scientific studies to ever take place in the United States (LeFlouria 1066-1067).…

    • 1451 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the past, scientists have done very unwise and unimaginable experiments with humans as the test subject. Like in 1932, the public health service was working to find treatment for syphilis in the african american race.They had 600 black men, 399 with syphilis and 201 that did not have the disease. Without the patient's knowing that they were contracted with syphilis, scientists told the men that they were being treated for “bad blood”. But really they were not given the right treatment to cure their illness. Also in exchange the men received free medical exams, free meals, and burial insurance, which is like life insurance. But in 1968 this research raised concern for peter buxton and others, so they wrote a news article about what these…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Tuskegee experiment was yet another demonstration of racial inequalities and dehumanization illustrated by a people who believed in racial superiority. The experiment was unethical and demoralizing from the beginning. The analysis was corrupt and unethical for a plethora of reasons. The experiment disregarded several basic principles of the American Sociological Association’s code of ethics. Perhaps the greatest flaw in the experiment was the intended denial of treatment, which, in turn, directly affected the subject’s safety, violating the code of ‘protecting subjects from personal harm’. ‘Respect the subject’s right to privacy and dignity’ is an additional custom in the code of ethics ignored. The researchers clearly could not even…

    • 785 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I would not have been able to go around recruiting hundreds of poor, un-educated, black males knowing what the study entails. On top of that I would not be able to hold all their medical information in my hands and simply go around and tell them vaguely that they have “bad blood”. I agree with Kantian ethics in the fact that regardless of the consequences lying is always wrong. Going off of that I would have looked at everything behind the veil of ignorance. This is part of Rawl’s Theory of Justice. The veil of ignorance says that each person is unaware of sex, race, natural endowments, social position, and economic position. This is how I would have looked at every candidate who participated in the study. Instead, the PHS had the impression, “That the people were all rural, impoverished, and poorly educated black males makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that the PHS regarded the subjects as hardly more than experimental animals.” (Munson, p.418) From the last statement, it refers to the subjects as being nothing more than animals. If I were placed in this study I would religiously follow the Natural Law theory. This theory states that the view that the rightness of actions is something determined by nature itself, rather than by the laws and customs of societies of the preferences of individuals. (Munson, p.493) It would be…

    • 1881 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1932, a study called The Tuskegee Syphilis study had just begun in Macon County, Alabama. The study in the beginning had involved a small group of 600 black men, and throughout the time of the study’s existence those numbers would change by either death of individual or an addition of a new black man added to the study. In the study, of those 600 men, an estimated 400 were purposely left unaware of the fact that syphilis infected them and they were not being treated for the disease. The main hypothesis in the study was the study of the natural course of syphilis in black male, and there were no questions asked if this was the study was ethically the right thing to do. This study would go on for about 40 years, and end in 1972 due to being exposed in an article by the Associated Press. The exposure of the study would lead the US government and the medical world down a path of change, those changes deal with patient’s knowledge of the experiment and ethics involved in human experimentation.…

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bad Blood

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Of course, those living in a community with and eighty percent black population who were mainly poor and illiterate would be an easy target to conduct experiments. Tell them that would be given proper treatment and fed good meals.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Tuskegee Experiment

    • 1307 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Tuskegee Experiment is one of the unethical Health Researches done in the United States. The way the research was conducted was against people's civil rights. Totally secretive and without any objectives, procedures or guidance from any government agency. During the time that the project was launched there were very few laws that protected the public from medical malpractice or from plainly negligence. Also the Civil Rights act did not pass until the 1960's.…

    • 1307 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics