Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments
Thread: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African-American men in Alabama. The study was a collaboration with the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama. Investigators enrolled a total of 600 impoverished sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama in the study. Of these men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 did not have the disease. The men were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance for participating in the study. None of the men infected were ever told they had the disease, nor were any treated with penicillin after the antibiotic became a proven treatment. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the men were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term for various illnesses that include syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. Discuss the following 2 points:
List 5 ethical problems that occurred in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
The advantage of randomized experiments is that they allow reliable conclusions without the need to worry about lurking variables. The ethical dilemma is to balance the benefits to the patients in the study (who would like the opportunity to choose among available treatments) with benefits to future patients (who would be served by learning as soon as possible about the effectiveness of the competing treatments). What are your ethical perspectives on the Tuskegee experiments? Provide at least 1 Scripture passage that supports your ethical perspectives on experimental studies.
500 word min. 2 sources and a bible source.
