...effective treatment. Throughout history African Americans have been subjected to racism and discrimination in which these past experiences can be pasted down from generation to generation effecting their beliefs in the health care system. Experimentation on slaves and the Tuskegee Experiment are just a couple of negative experiences to impact African Americans and their trust in physicians and health care in general that continue to this day. Mistrust in the health field for African Americans stems from numerous events, one being that of the experimentation on slaves. Back in the day when the white population owned slaves, they were subjected at times to very painful and unethical experimentation. In the South African Americans filled hospital beds where they were used as dissection experiments to help doctors perfect their practice in the medical field (Harris, Gorelick, Samuels, & Bempong). They were also used to test new techniques and remedies. One such example is that of a slave named Fed. Fed was “secured in an open pit in the ground that was then covered and heated to test which medication enabled him to withstand heat. Each session ended when Fed finally succumbed to the heat and fainted” (Harris, et al.). Slaves were also used to test the safety of vaccines, which was obtained by injecting them with certain diseases such as small pox. Distrust in health care only continued post slavery and into the 1930s with the Tuskegee Experiment. African...
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...Prisoners of Henrietta Lacks, and the Value of Their Fate Inquiry Question: How does Rebecca Skloot’s depiction of prisoner experiments and research change the way we think about how early medical developments were first brought to life, and who really took the risks we should credit for them? Hypothesis/Working Thesis: Considering the reduced liabilities, rights, and public outreach of prisoners in the past, using prisoners as test rats was viewed as highly unethical and forceful by many. Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010. Print. In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot not only argues her point, but also does a great job at informing and teaching her readers the vast risks prisoners were susceptible to while being used by doctors as human guinea pigs. Skloot makes many references to different potentially deadly diseases that were injected into prisoners for further research. The public’s opinion on this happening was shocking; many thinking it was highly unethical and forceful of the doctors. Skloot makes claims about how prisoners were viewed as vulnerable inmates who were unable to give informed consent. Regardless of how the treatment was viewed, prisons and doctors did what they wanted to do in those days ranging from diseases, to chemical warfare agents, to deterring how X-raying testicles affected sperm count (Skloot 129). Throughout her study of how HeLa cells have expanded, and where they...
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...Public Health Service. The reasoning of the Tuskegee experiment was to study the effects of untreated syphilis in the rural Macon Country on poverty affected African-American males who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government but were actually being injected with syphilis without consent. The research started in 1932, on 600 low-income African American men, out of which 399 who had already contracted syphilis, and 201 who were disease free. To get the participants to begin medical experiments, government funded programs offered free medical care, meals, and free burial services to those who...
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...While the field of prosthetics and medical enhancement may be a relatively new field, the history of medicine is well over 2000 years old. The concept of medical ethics have been a backbone of the practice from the start, “The most famous document in medical history, the Hippocratic Oath (c. 400 B.C.E.), which established a model of ethical and professional behavior for healers” (Paul 1399). According to the article “I. United States” written by a biomedical ethicist and a member of the medical ethics committee: the development of bioethics can best be understood against the background of the development of medicine in the United States from 1900. The twentieth century saw enormous growth in American medicine—in scientific understanding, the...
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...ethical principles to protect human participants in biomedical research from undue exploitation by researchers. However, in the “Tuskegee Study” in the US, these principles were grossly violated. The task of this paper is to critically examine the ethical implications of that study on future practices in biomedical research, and to suggest ways of ensuring that such practices comply with appropriate ethical values. Key Words Bioethics, Biomedical research, clinical research, Tuskegee Study, paternalism, morality Introduction From time to time human beings experience health challenges, whether physical or mental. On its part, medical practice has made considerable progress towards combating or controlling many of these challenges. It is through research that the nature, symptoms and effects of ailments can be ascertained and remedies discovered. Medical researchers engage in both therapeutic and non-therapeutic research. Therapeutic research is that carried out with the purpose of treating disease. On the other hand, non-therapeutic research is aimed at 76 Adebayo A. Ogungbure furthering the frontiers of knowledge about human health. Furthermore, researchers and physicians often use human beings as objects of scientific investigation, raising certain ethical concerns, including the issue of informed consent and how consent is obtained, selection of participants in research, the welfare of human subjects involved in...
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...Why do you think that researchers believed that they could get away with committing such blatant ethical violations? Selection of the African-American population for the Tuskegee syphilis experiment can be attributed to various social, political, and cultural factors. At the time, racial prejudices and stereotypes were deeply ingrained in the prevailing social hierarchy, with African-Americans facing systemic discrimination and limited access to healthcare. This made them vulnerable and easily exploited for medical experiments. As reported by the Tuskegee University “The study took place in Macon County, Alabama, the county seat of Tuskegee referred to as the "Black Belt" because of its rich soil and vast number of black sharecroppers who were the economic backbone of the region.” (Tuskegee University, n.d.) Moreover, the researchers might have believed they could get away with such ethical violations due to the systemic racism and power imbalances that allowed the marginalization of African-Americans. Additionally, the study took place during a period of medical paternalism, where physicians were assumed to have unquestionable authority and could...
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...From time to time human beings experience health challenges, whether physical or mental. On its part, medical practice has made considerable progress towards combating or controlling many of these challenges. It is through research that the nature, symptoms and effects of ailments can be ascertained and remedies discovered. Medical researchers engage in both therapeutic and non-therapeutic research. Therapeutic research is that carried out with the purpose of treating disease. On the other hand, non-therapeutic research is aimed at 76 Adebayo A. Ogungbure furthering the frontiers of knowledge about human health. Furthermore, researchers and physicians often use human beings as objects of scientific investigation, raising certain ethical concerns, including the issue of informed consent and how consent is obtained, selection of participants in research, the welfare of human subjects involved in a research project, what the goals of research ought to be, and what ought to constitute proper procedure for an ethical research. These issues are central to an aspect of applied ethics which is now commonly referred to as research ethics. The aim of research ethics is to ensure that research projects involving human subjects are carried out without causing harm to the subjects involved. In addition, it provides a sort of regulatory framework which ensures that human participants in research are not exploited either physically or psychologically. The need for ethical guidelines...
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...principles to protect human participants in biomedical research from undue exploitation by researchers. However, in the “Tuskegee Study” in the US, these principles were grossly violated. The task of this paper is to critically examine the ethical implications of that study on future practices in biomedical research, and to suggest ways of ensuring that such practices comply with appropriate ethical values. Key Words Bioethics, Biomedical research, clinical research, Tuskegee Study, paternalism, morality Introduction From time to time human beings experience health challenges, whether physical or mental. On its part, medical practice has made considerable progress towards combating or controlling many of these challenges. It is through research that the nature, symptoms and effects of ailments can be ascertained and remedies discovered. Medical researchers engage in both therapeutic and non-therapeutic research. Therapeutic research is that carried out with the purpose of treating disease. On the other hand, non-therapeutic research is aimed at 76 Adebayo A. Ogungbure furthering the frontiers of knowledge about human health. Furthermore, researchers and physicians often use human beings as objects of scientific investigation, raising certain ethical concerns, including the issue of informed consent and how consent is obtained, selection of participants in research, the welfare of human...
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...Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment Name University of Phoenix Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment was a 40 years study from 1932 to 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama. The experiment was conducted on a group of 399 impoverished and illiterate African American sharecroppers. This disease was not; however revealed to them by the US Government. They were told they were going to receive treatment for bad blood. The study proved to be one of the most horrendous studies carried out that disregarded the basic ethical principles of conduct. It symbolized medical and disregard for human life. Standard medical treatment at the time were toxic, dangerous and, often time questionable in respect to effect. Some of the studies were being addressed to determine if a patient was better off not being treated at all. Researchers also tried to prolong any treatment to study the different stages of syphilis so they may be able to find a more suitable means of treatment. Medical ethics during this time did not have standard for informing patients. Information often withheld regarding their condition so patients often went through testing and treatment with little knowledge of consequences. By experiencing the study the participants were kept in the dark about the disease so they would co-operation. During this time these men were considered subjects, not patients. They were not considered patients, but clinical material instead of sick people. Most of the experiments...
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...Harriet Washington – Medical Apartheid Book Essay QUESTION 1: Iatrophobia “One of the most harmful contemporary legacies of this history of abusive medical experimentation is that many African Americans are wary of participating in potentially life saving medical studies. A recent study in the American Journal of Law and Medicine estimated that only 1 percent of the nearly 20 million Americans enrolled in biomedical studies are black. This reluctance, though justified, has meant that blacks often miss out on the latest treatments and breakthroughs.” – Amara Rivera Given the History of Medical Apartheid in the U.S., African-Americans have tended to be iatrophobic. Should African-Americans continue to participate in medical research and trust their doctors today? Would Harriet Washington and Tim Wise be in support of your argument? QUESTION 2: Ebola Watch this Press TV video: The Debate: Ebola Man-made (pt1) (11 mins) Based on his arguments, is Dr. Short a conspiracy theorist? Comment on the validity of Dr. Short’s arguments and examples given the arguments provided by Washington in Medical Apartheid in the Epilogue of the book and in the rest of the text. Use the relevant examples and ideas Washington uses to draw connections between medical apartheid practiced on Blacks in the U.S and Blacks in Africa from her book. QUESTION 3: Scientific Racism and Eugenics The "science" of eugenics proposed that human perfection could be developed through selective breeding and...
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...innocent African American lives. Researchers in Macon County, Alabama started this study in 1932 in order to examine the effects of untreated syphilis in African American men. The study began with 399 subjects with the disease and 201 without it; by the time the research was halted in 1972, over one hundred of the men had died (Jones 2). One government organization involved in this experimentation acted particularly irrationally: the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC knew exactly what was going on with the Tuskegee Experiment and understood that the subjects were being denied treatment. However, the CDC never questioned the morality of their experiment. Furthermore, the director at the time, Dr. David Sencer, was an advocate for continuing the research. Even when Dr. Irwin J. Schatz, staff member of the Henry Ford Hospital, first sent his letter to the CDC objecting to the Tuskegee study in 1964, Dr. Sencer allowed the CDC to set the letter aside and pretend it did not exist. When another opponent of the study, Peter Buxton, started his 1965 investigation of the study, Sencer’s first concern was not that the CDC was acting unethically, but that the CDC would get bad press (Jones 190). Clearly the CDC was not actually focused on the welfare of unhealthy Americans, but was instead corrupt and self-serving. This organization was primarily political and secondarily medical. To prevent inhumane research experiments like the Tuskegee Study from occurring on American soil again...
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...In recent years growing attention has been giving to the fact that African Americans are less likely to pursue hospice care at the end of their lives. This paper will first examine the case for hospice and why it is a valuable resource and one that is consistent with Christian values. Then, I will survey the data regarding African Americans and hospice, particularly looking at considering what the main factors are for the racial disparity of hospice users. I conclude the main factor is distrust for the healthcare system as a result of centuries of medical abuse, experimentation and neglect. In light of this racist healthcare history, I will consider theologically what a Christian response to the racial disparity in hospice care is by using...
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...In 1932, the rural town of Tuskegee was a mostly black town that was governed by whites. World War II had not began, though there was trouble brewing in Europe as these countries began to pacify the fiery German giants who would later commit unspeakable acts, one that horrified Americans who had little knowledge of what was going on in a little Alabama time all at the government’s behest. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment began in 1932, after the venereal disease section of the PHS created a c study group at its national headquarters to study the sexually transmitted disease known as Syphillis. The man behind the plan was Dr. Taliaferro Clark, a senior officer in the PHS who planned only for the experiment to last for six to nine months, before treating the men and ending the study. He contacted Tuskegee University (then Tuskegee Institute) to gain their cooperation to expand the study into a real-word environment and study the effects. The PHS then invited poor and poorly uneducated African-American men to come to the Institute to receive free medical exams and treatment. They also provided meals and...
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...Medical experiments involving human subjects were extremely common throughout the 1900s and in many cases were highly unethical, one of those cases were Henrietta Lacks as well as The Tuskegee Men, also the Nazi Test subjects. Henrietta Lacks was used as a human subject for experiments when her doctors at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix without her consent and attempted to grow and keep them alive. After she died of cervical cancer, these cells, known as HeLa cells, became essitenial to scientific research, contributing to developments like vaccines and other medical advancements. However because of her race and socio economic status, Henrietta Lacks was exploited by doctors, researchers and the media and treated as the largest medical experiment. A quote that supports this is “Hela cells were one of the most important things that happened to...
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...In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, scientific and medical experimentation was being conducted in countries like Japan, Germany, the United States and many others. Many experiments that took place during this time period were done on humans, most of which were conducted forcibly and without the consent of its participants. There were two major vanguards that carried out these experiments, one of which was under the rationalization of eugenics. The other was research carried out for war purposes. For example, the development of chemical and biological warfare was being attempted during this time period. The Japanese during WWII had a disturbingly particular interest in the development of biological weapons. According to the documentary “Unit 731: Nightmare in Manchuria” the Japanese conducted research on unknowing human participants in order to develop biological weapons. In 1940 and 1941, Unit 731 bred bubonic plague infested fleas that were then spread by low flying planes over Chinese...
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