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The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

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In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was mentioned. Throughout Henrietta’s time of being sick with cervical cancer, she was not told she had the disease. Scientists took samples of Henrietta’s cells and brought them to the prestigious Tuskegee Institute for further study (Skloot pg. 23). It was at this same institute that the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was performed. The U.S Public Health Service Team Department was the one to sponsor the study (Batten). This particular study was done to see the different effects syphilis had on African American males. Throughout this study, there were many things that were done unethically and took many years to be made known. The Tuskegee syphilis study took place at the highly known Tuskegee Institute College, in Alabama in 1932. The PHS (Public Health Service) department recruited local doctors and nurses who would not treat the men with syphilis (Clinton). They had white physicians within their department administer the study (Batten). There were 400 …show more content…

Several doctors who participated in the study continued to justify the experiment.Dr. J. R. Heller, who on one occasion had referred to the test subjects as the "Ethiopian population,"(Brandt). This sounds potentially racist. In 1997, Bill Clinton finally issued his apology to the African Americans and also the federal government, Only 8 out of the 399 participants who had syphilis were still alive (Clinton). Bill Clinton spoke of the mistrust and racial animus to a group of survivors and said theses words, “We can look you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry” (Clinton).The surviving people were given $37,500, members of the control group were given $16,000, and each control subject received $5,000. The government is making sure to stop the disease so it does not end as a catastrophic event

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