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Tuskegee Studies

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According to Carol A. Heintzelman (2003, Vol. 10, No. 4), the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the African American male was the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history. The study began in 1932 in Macon County, Alabama, where the government used 600 men in a forty-year experiment. The purpose of the Tuskegee study was to record the history of syphilis in blacks, but to ultimately determine if syphilis had the same effect on African Americans as whites. The African American men were told that they were receiving free “treatment” for “bad blood”, in which case they thought they were being treated for different ailments. But in actuality they were being injected with syphilis and watched to see how their …show more content…

In this case, the question of this experiment was, “Does the prevalence of syphilis have the same effect on African American and whites?” Syphilis was said to be a “black” disease. In order to see if this question was true, a special type of person was needed, “the poor African American male”. The men who were chosen to participate in this experiment were very poor, had little to no education, worked on cotton fields, and had become accustom to their living conditions such as racism and lack of health care, and made it their lifestyle. Fred Grey (1998, p. 36) stated “I am sure that only a handful of the 600 participants… had ever been treated by a physician. This was the state of health care in Macon County at the time the men were selected to enter the …show more content…

The science in this is the scientific experiment of taking a subject in this case African American men and using them as guinea pigs to test their reaction due to the injection of syphilis. The public policy in this experiment is that the unawareness of what the men were getting themselves into and how they were being told misleading promises. In conclusion, the Tuskegee Syphilis study is not a study, but an experiment. The Tuskegee syphilis study can be broken down clearly using the scientific method. The experiment overall was unethical and the participants in no way shape or form deserved this. In order to compensate the participants and their families, the U.S. government promised lifetime medical benefits and burial services to all living participants, their wives, widow, and offspring and in 1997, President Clinton issued a formal apology to the participants and their

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