What Is The Significance Of The Tuskegee Study

During a time when African Americans had an inferior and “irrelevant” role in society, they were utilized by scientists for the success of a deadly study. From 1932 to 1972, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study used African American men in order to observe and understand all aspects of the venereal disease, syphilis, which an immense number of African Americans possessed. Though the Tuskegee Syphilis Study may have sounded trustworthy and beneficial to those with the disease, one must not be deceived, for the foundation of the study was built on a pile of lies. The scientists of the experiment intentionally took advantage of the helpless African Americans in order to research more about syphilis as opposed to actually curing the syphilitic victims.
The absence of honesty and accommodating treatment throughout the duration of this study contravened humans’ ethical rights stated in the Nuremberg Code. The cruel and inconsiderate intentions of the study, the way the study was conducted, and the overall ethical mistreatment of it led to the harmful outcomes the African American experimental subjects had to face.
The cause of an act leads to the birth of a result. In regards to the purpose and cause of Tuskegee study the goal was not only to “determine the prevalence of syphilis among blacks and explore the possibilities for mass treatment” (Brandt 22), but to also to emphasize how “Syphilis in the negro is in many respects almost a different disease from Syphilis in the white”(Brandt 6). Scientists came to an agreement that a difference between whites and blacks was that “The negro possessed an excessive sexual desire which threatened the very foundations of white society. Negro springs from a southern race, and as such his sexual appetite is strong” (Brandt 2). This immense promiscuous interaction of African Americans is what was causing the disease. In order for there to have been an experiment, African Americans with syphilis were needed. “The USPHS found Macon County, Alabama, in which the town of Tuskegee is located, to have the highest syphilis rate of the six counties surveyed. The Rosenwald Study concluded that mass treatment could be successfully implemented among rural blacks” (Brandt 4). Scientists only desired to investigate and experiment, not to cure the patients. Once the study was conducted, “the subjects
of the study were never told they were participating in an ‘experiment.’ Treatment that could have cured them was deliberately withheld, and many of the men were prevented from seeing physicians who could have helped them” (Brandt 1). Instead of supplying the men with treatment, the scientists supplied them with “non effective medicine- ‘spring tonic’ and aspirin’”(Brandt 9). Also, “Subjects were told they were ill“ and were falsely “ promised free therapy, so they became willing subjects for what they thought was a public health demonstration” (Brandt 7). All in all, the conduction of the study consisted of false treatment, deliberate imprecise information, and specific types of experimentation such as “spinal taps to test for neurosyphilis” (Brandt 7). If Scientists had informed the African American experimental subjects that they weren’t going to waste time and money giving them actual treatment since “the scientists believed the Negro race in America was in the throes of a degenerative evolutionary process” (Brandt 2) anyways, the subjects would’ve most likely never agreed to be part of the study. It was mandatory for the scientists to lie to the experimental subjects in order to receive more cooperative African Americans with syphilis for the success of the study.

Many aspects of the Tuskegee study, including how it was conducted and abuses of personal rights, violated the Nuremberg code. The Nuremberg Code is a set of rules that protects humans’ ethical rights in medical research and experimentation. For instance, according to Nuremberg Code 1, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential”(The Nuremberg Code), meaning “that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have full knowledge of all aspects of the experiment” (The Nuremberg Code). Because the scientists conducting the Tuskegee study “failed to obtain informed consent”(Brandt 11) and because “the subjects of the study were never told they were participating in an ‘experiment’”(Brandt 1), the experiment was considered “ethically unjustified”(Brandt 11). Besides the fact that the scientists never received the patients’ full consent for experimentation, the scientists also neglected the fact that “a continuation of the experiment was likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject”(Nuremberg Code 10). The conductors of the Tuskegee study argued that “a test of untreated Syphilis seemed “natural” because the USPHS presumed the men would never be treated anyways” (Brandt 6). On the other hand, the act violated Nuremberg Code 10 since the conductors of the study had knowledge that “more than 100 had died directly from advanced Syphilis lesions” since “the men didn’t receive therapy for Syphilis. In fact, on several occasions, the USPHS actually sought to prevent treatment” (Brandt 1). In conclusion, the USPHS deliberately refused to provide the experimental subjects with treatment, despite the fact that many were dying without treatment for the disease. Also the patients were never given full knowledge of the aspects of the study, therefore there was no way they could’ve given their full consent. Because the study violated the prime laws of human ethics, the study can be considered cruel and abusive to human ethics and personal rights.

Due to abuses of personal rights and unrighteous acts throughout the duration of the study, there were horrid consequences that the experimental subjects were forced to face.
For instance, because the experimental subjects were never given treatment, “scores of people died painful deaths, and others became permanently blind or insane, and the children of several were born with congenital Syphilis” (Brandt 1). Many researchers explained opinions contradictory to the conducting scientists’ opinions of the study regarding human ethics, such as Dr. J. E. Moore who wrote, “treatment markedly diminishes the risk from Syphilis” (Brandt 5). Since the patients were kept untreated by the USPHS, “as the Oslo Study had shown, untreated Syphilis led to to cardiovascular disease, insanity, and premature death”(Brandt 5). Though the results of experimentation may be reliable, the unjust, unrighteous, and inconsiderate acts performed by the conductors of the Tuskegee Study and the many researchers’ opinions regarding human ethics that contradicted the acts of the Tuskegee study caused it to have a disrespected reputation for the long
term.

The cruel and inconsiderate intentions of the study, the way the study was conducted, and the overall ethical mistreatment of it led to the harmful outcomes that the African American experimental subjects had to face. Scientists inconsiderately risked the lives of hundreds of innocent people for the success of a study. Despite the fact that the experimental subjects were actual humans with feelings, the conductors of the study forced the subjects into the experiment without informing them about all aspects of it. Neither did they provide the subjects with treatment to cure their health to keep them from dying, but instead, the conductors of the study provided the subjects with false treatment and risky experiments, which resulted in hundreds of deaths, ruining lives, and forming horrible reputations for the study and the conductors themselves.