Preview

What's The Purpose Of The Tuskegee Syphilis Study?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1054 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What's The Purpose Of The Tuskegee Syphilis Study?
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. The uninflected men served as the control, or constant of this experiment. Dr. Raymond Vonderlehr, a researcher sent to …show more content…
The researchers had no respect for their test subjects, medical researchers should have had to obtain informed consent from their study participants. This means that participants must be given accurate information about their circumstances and treatment options so that they can decide what will happen to them. The subjects also were not aware of all of the potential risk factors that would influence their decision to participate in the trial. Researchers faced much backlash on their experiment, especially from articles in newspapers. In Taking the Least of You, author Rebecca Skloot states, “All of the important research that has been done over the years- it all depended on free and unlimited access to tissues” (Skloot 14). This quote from an article supports the fact that tissues are needed, but proper consent should have been requested. Because the disease was never treated, syphilis was genetically passed down through generations of African Americans. An additional repercussion was that a panel was created to review the study and declare it ethnically injusticed. This panel stopped advising the study, and additional groups to prevent something like this from happening were created. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study highlighted issues in race and science that were prevalent in society at the time, and even

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Tuskegee Syphilis Study began in 1932 in Tuskegee, Alabama. The case was created by the United States Public Health Service, the objective was to analyze the natural course of untreated latent syphilis. The disease was injected into roughly 400 African American men without their consent. The men were misled of the promise “special free treatment”. Instead the “treatment” were spinal taps done without anesthesia to evaluate the neurological effects of the disease. It was morally wrong to test these men without permission and mislead them to false hope of an antibiotic.…

    • 393 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the film Ms. Evers' Boys, a group of doctors withholds penicillin from a group of black men who are suffering from syphilis. The movie itself depicted a true, historical (and quite controversial) study known as the Tuskegee Experiment, which took place in the times after the Civil Rights Movement. The doctors taking part in this research were trying to prove that the effects of syphilis were as severe in blacks as they were in whites in order to get more money for medication. They also wanted…

    • 389 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In 1932 the U.S. public Health service launched the the most horrific non-therapeutic experiment in medical history.The physicians of the experiment promised medical treatment to over four hundred African Americans in Macon county , Alabama.The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment was a disaster from the beginning. The doctors' idea of this experiment was theorized by their racism. They had assumptions that African Americans…

    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory 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
  • Satisfactory Essays

    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…

    • 262 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    This is because a human life is valued more than any other subject used in clinical trials. In order to ensure the efficacy and legitimacy of treatment, human subjects are the most accurate compared to animals. Human subjects cultivate concrete information and data necessary for the improvement of medicine and health care as a whole. Baillie, McGeehan, T.M. Garrett, and R.M. Garrett (2013) stated, “…human experimentation is necessary for medical progress. Animal testing is useful, but it cannot provide the final word on either safety or efficacy” (p. 300). On the contrary, this does not excuse the researcher from disregarding a clinical participant’s life and safety. According to Baillie et al. (2013), humans are not objects that are used however the researcher desires (p. 293). Human experimentation, conversely, has a long history of abuse. Many rules and guidelines have been set in place to prevent researchers from taking advantage of human subjects all in the name of “science”. Due to these unfortunate events, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) have been established to protect and oversee the organization and conduction of human experimentation (Baillie et al., 2013). One historical event that led to the development of stringent biomedical experimentation rules and guidelines was the Tuskegee syphilis research experiment (Head, 2012). This experiment was widely acknowledged and is known as…

    • 1010 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good 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

    Medical research studies disease in patients and how they are affected by these illnesses. However, consent is always required whether or not treatment is administered. Patients should always be kept informed of the changes in their condition and the treatment they are receiving. Sadly, this was not the case for the Tuskegee study on Syphilis in African American.…

    • 748 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Beneficence Principle wants maximum benefits and minimum harm. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment did the exact opposite of that. The government doctors of the US Public Health Service studied the maximum harm and minimum benefits of untreated syphilis. According to Taliaferro Clark, the founder of the experiment, “Macon County is a natural laboratory – a ready made situation. The rather low intelligence of the negro population, depressed economic conditions, and the very common promiscuous sexual relations, not only contribute to the spread of syphilis but also to the prevailing indifference with regard to treatment” (DiAnni, 1993). The government doctors studied patients with syphilis from the earliest of stages all the way to death, the…

    • 675 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Henrietta Lacks Inequality

    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, race is one of the main themes as Skloot tells her story about Henrietta. When Henrietta goes to the doctor to discover some pain that she has and how the doctors took samples out of her without her consent. Since she is African American, the doctors assume that she is uneducated and do not tell her what is wrong with her body. Henrietta was not the only one though, in the 1950's doctors attempted various procedures on African Americans and other races like Latinos. Many were exploited and their bodies were used for medical reasons and were not treated like human beings, but like experiments. In the reading, Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson discusses the…

    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Findings were that the black community there had the highest percentage of syphilis in nation , with a percentage of 36. Their intentions were to treat the infected African American infected men with neosalvarsan. Soon after the study began the Great Depression began, and their funds for the study diminished. The USPHS did another survey and found about 399 men who had syphilis and ever never treated. This arose curiosity and began the study of the nature of syphilis.…

    • 1960 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Currently, the Institutional Review Board (IRB) requires informed consent from participants in any research study (p. 50, 42). Although the IRB did not exist until the 1970s, after the conclusion of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, there were certainly laws and measures put in place to prevent mistreatment of research participants that came about during the near half-century duration of the experiment. As stated previously, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study began with 600 black men. The researchers chose an impoverished town with the understanding that these men would be willing to participate and also not have the background to recognize or resist any unreliable factors in the study. The men of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study were deceived about the…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The researchers used the participant’s illiteracy against them. Knowing they did not have the means to question what was being done to them. Where the experiment went awry is that once penicillin was an acceptable means for treating syphilis the men were discouraged from receiving other healthcare except for what was provided by the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Many people in the years that the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment took place were aware of the atrocities being committed due to the clinical data that was being provided but very few cared. Finally, in the 1970s Peter Buxtun became the whistleblower and the story broke in the Washington Star on July 25,…

    • 478 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1932, the Public Health Service alongside with the Tuskegee Institute, initiated a study relating with syphilis; specifically experimenting if it effected African Americans differently than European Americans. The theory to conduct this experiment was to see if syphilis in the whites experienced more neurological complications whereas blacks were more prone to cardiovascular damage (“The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment”). The experiment involved a total of 600 black males which 399 of them had syphilis and 201 did not have syphilis. These uneducated black males were from the poorest counties in Alabama and was never informed what kind of disease they were suffering from. The only information they received was that they were being treated for “bad blood”. In exchange for participating in the study, the men received free medical exams, free meals, and burial insurance. (National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention)…

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 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