Essay On Tuskegee Study

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study had lots of controversy over the 1900´s. The study happened in a racist and poor time period between 1932 and 1972. It included 600 African American men that were infected with Syphilis. It was conducted in rural and poor Tuskegee, Alabama. The test was to see if African American males responded to Syphilis differently than white males. This study was passed and funded through Congress; however they did not know the full story. The wrong in this study was that the men did not give informed consent and did not receive any treatment. The men were studied till their autopsy, which is obviously death. This sparked much controversy and changed human experimentation forever.

Based on our past history (e.g., the Tuskegee experiment) it is now crucial to apply confidentiality and informed consent in studies, especially human subjects. Therefore, harm can reduced as much as possible. I feel the past history is a lesson that social scientists should avoid in studies. All human subjects are required to understand the risk factors and procedures in a study they are participating in. If they require confidentiality, researchers should also agree. Like you have mentioned they are helping researchers gain valuable evidence and this should be respected.

This is known as the Institutional Review Board (IRB), which governs research ethics in studies involving human subjects in order to ensure no ethical violations would occur and the patients were protected. Unfortunately it took these 600 African-American men and their families to help create a review board in order to make sure patients rights in biological experiments such as this one are reviewed to confirm patient’s rights and ethical principals are being followed throughout human

The Tuskegee Syphilis study disregarded the health of African American men, targeted these men because of their ethnicity and lack of education and withheld an effective treatment from these men in an effort to continue the study. Also, these men were not provided with information concerning the study and this inhibited their right to make the conscious decision to participate. The Stanford Prison Experiment failed to minimize harm to the participants. The prisoners were mistreated, degraded, humiliated and endured severe emotional and psychological distress. The experiment ended after six

The independent variable of the Tuskegee Experiment was the treatment or lack thereof. The dependent variable was how the participants responded to the treatment. To recruit participant’s researchers offered free transportations, free food, and free treatment for other illnesses (Jones, 1993, p. 4). To retain the participants during the course of the study researches continued to offer the same benefits they did in the beginning. They also used Nurse Eunice Rivers. She was an African American woman who worked with the study the complete 40 years it ran (Troncoso, 2014, p. 1). She was able to relate to participants and families as well as build

The four core ethical principles that are called into question in the movie “Miss Evers’ Boys” are autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Autonomy refers to the right of the patient to function independently and the ability to self-direct. This means that patients are entitled to decide what will happen to them, and if deemed competent, they have the right to either consent to or refuse treatment. All nurses and healthcare personal would be required to respect the patient’s wishes, even if they do not agree with them. Beneficence is the core principle that refers to the act of ‘doing good’ and advocating for the patient. All nurses should take positive actions to help their patients and to have the desire to do good. On the other hand, nonmaleficence is the core of the nursing ethics and it revolves around the idea that nurses have to remain competent in their field as to avoid causing injury or harm to patients. Nonmaleficence also requires all health care professionals to report any suspected abuse. The last ethical principle is justice. This ethical principle revolves around the idea that all patients must be treated equally and fairly. This includes fairly distributing resources and time among all patients. During the Tuskegee Study, one can clearly see that these ethical principles

They were told that they were being treated of ‘bad blood” and the doctors who conducted this study had no intention of curing the patients of syphilis at all; their focus of the experiment was to see the symptoms from beginning to end. The doctors of the experiment persuaded people to join the trial by offering to pay for burial services and by providing care for their illness which they thought was something else. This experiment targeted African Americans that had no education level to know that they were being manipulated. They were taught to believe that doctors were there to help and nothing they would do would harm them. Like when the only real cure for syphilis was discovered the patients were denied of treatment. The first major ethical issue that should be considers is informed consent, which is informing the research participants what they are participating and all aspects of the project/ experiment that might cause the patient to not participate. The second issue is withholding treatment for the purpose of research. As doctors and caretakers it is the job to take care and cure rather than

The first principle highlighted the point of respect to persons meaning that each person has freewill and is given the choice to participate in a study or not. Also, if the person is incapacitated of making their own decisions, they require protection. In the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, researchers prevented any person part of the study the option to withdraw. The second principle of the Belmont Report is beneficence meaning do no harm. Specifically, no physical or psychological harm will come to the human subjects participating in a study. Additionally, this point protects against loss of confidentiality and deception. Within the decades the Tuskegee Experiment lasted, participants were subjected to medical procedures that required them to endure massive amount of pain at one time. Because participants were barred from administration of the penicillin , they suffered for years of syphilis symptoms. Many of the human subjects transmitted the disease to their families, wives and children. On the course of the study, the researchers even allowed the death of some of the participants. Lastly, the third Belmont principle is justice. Justice in this sense meaning that there must be an equal selection of participants for the research that does not disadvantage another group, all participants must share equal risks and benefits of the research. The Tuskegee Experiment solely targeted African American men,

The absence of informed consent disallowed the partakers to make informed decisions about participation in the research study. The participants continued to be misled from the beginning to the conclusion of the study. Thankfully, specific laws have been enacted to avoid missteps like the ones that occurred in the Tuskeegee Experiment. The National Research Act Public Law 93-348 was signed to address ethical practices in research. From this, a committee was borne that identified the ethical principles that should be included in studies that involve human subjects. The ethical principles brought about are distinguishing between research and routine medical care, establishing the risk to benefit ratio, determining the guidelines for choosing participants, and requiring informed consent. IRBs are boards that were created to oversee proposed research studies. Every detailed study must be submitted to this diverse group of individuals for approval. The findings are then posted in the Belmont Report. The Belmont Report identifies basic ethical principles and guidelines that should be applied (Rebar & Gersch,

Stanford Prison Experiment is a popular experiment among social science researchers. In 1973, a psychologist named Dr. Philip Zimbardo wants to find out what are the factors that cause reported brutalities among guards in American prisons. His aim was to know whether those reported brutalities were because of the personalities of the guards or the prison environment. However, during the experiment, things get muddled unexpectedly. The experiment became controversial since it violates some ethical standards while doing the research.

Can an image tell us everything we want to know about what happened? Why or why not?

The subjects that survived the Tuskegee experiment did not find out what was really being done to them until forty years after the fact ("The Deadly Deception"). All of this deceit caused African Americans to not want to trust white doctors and it is hard not to agree with them. Deborah, Henrietta Lack’s daughter, was afraid that researchers were doing something harmful to her mother and that is why she died (Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks [pg.186]). Deborah heard about the Tuskegee experiment and how supposedly the doctors were injecting the subjects with syphilis, and so Deborah was really paranoid about doctors and what they were really doing (Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks [pg186]). This sort of treatment and disregard for African Americans rights as humans leave them no other choice but to not trust science and medicine. The Tuskegee experiment was not the only research study that tricked African Americans into getting procedures which then led to more distrust of science and medicine. African American women thought they were getting their appendix removed but without their consent or knowledge had hysterectomies preformed on them for no other reason than for young doctors to practice doing the procedure leaving these women no longer able to have children (Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

During the 1960’s when Henrietta found out she had cancer there was still segregation in America and that meant African Americans were not treated with equality. Certain things that were done to them were not considered legally right, but were deemed medically appropriate. For example the Tuskegee syphilis study which occurred in the 1930’s; “They recruited hundreds of African-American men with syphilis, then watched them die slow, painful and preventable deaths, even after penicillin could cure them.”(Skloot, 2010, p. 50). Also there was the Mississippi Appendectomies; “…unnecessary hysterectomies performed on poor black women to stop them from reproducing, to give young doctors a chance to practice the procedure.”(Skloot, 2010, p. 50). Racism has since been abolished and is now considered discrimination; also it is illegal to do any medical procedure on uninformed patients. However in today’s society like the era before, everyone has their own opinion and although it is legally and socially unethical people can still be bias. Also the patients in the studies did not have informed consent. There are three things in which you need to have informed consent; knowing, voluntary and competency.(10/17/13) They subjects had none of them, “They were poor and uneducated, and the researchers offered incentives…” (Skloot, 2010, p. 50). Things have certainly improved for African-Americans and for the medical field in

Back in the day doctors believed that non-doctors could never understand since they didn’t go to college or medical school. In result doctors never explained to patient’s their procedures, and they weren’t forced to by any law. Hopkins was one of the few hospitals that treated black patients. The Lack’s and poor uneducated black families went to Hopkins and put all their faith in the doctors. They had no idea that they were being experimented on. Doctors thought, since patients were receiving quality treatment they thought it was okay to experiment on them in return. The doctors at Hopkins took advantage of their patients because they knew they were uneducated and they wanted to advance their personal

For instance, the practitioners are obligated to constantly inform the participants about plans that pertains to interventions (Reamer, 1987). In addition, it is essential for informed consent to include the following: “What is done, the reasons for doing it, clients must be capable of providing consent, they must have the right to refuse or withdraw consent, and their decisions must be based on adequate information” (Kirk & Wakefield, 1997, p. 275). One of the most dehumanizing incidents that occur is the researchers prohibit the participants’ self-determination. For example, the men were compliant with receiving treatment and to be examined by the physicians. However, the physicians did not reveal the actual purpose of the study. Consequently, penicillin was the most effective medication, but the doctors decided to withhold treatment (Bozeman, Hirsch, & Slade ,