...Ethics Analysis Topics: The Tuskegee experiments. There are numerous ethical guidelines in Biomedical Research on human subjects. The increasing research in developing countries and the international guidelines released by the developed countries in 2002 had its focus on the observation of ethical norms for the protection of research subjects (Indian Council of Medical Research 9). The year 1932 was when the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) started its Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Biber 83). This study involved the inspection of untreated latent syphilis cases in human subjects and tried to find out the natural course of the disease. The sample for this study consisted of three hundred and ninety nine black males from Tuskegee, Alabama with late-stage syphilis and two hundred and one non-infected males. Along the years research has been undertaken without the consent of the subjects. The Weber State University website indicates their involvement in the formulation of research guidelines under the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Under the Public Health Service Act there is a regulation to protect human subjects of research and implement a guidance instruction on ethical issues. Three basic principles of ethics were formulated to protect human subjects in biomedical and behavioral research. One of the principle advocates for respect for persons which involves recognition of personal dignity. The second principle aims at ensuring that subjects are protected...
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...The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was a clinical study of untreated syphilis in hundreds of poor African American men. The members of the study thought that they were receiving free healthcare from the United States Government, and were told only that they had “bad blood.” Throughout the experiment the men remained unaware that they had syphilis. Even with the development of penicillin, the standard treatment for the syphilis, the men went purposefully untreated for the sake of the experiment. The study lasted forty years. Along the lines of the Catholic Social Teaching, this study is entirely unacceptable. First and foremost, the experiment is in total disregard of dignity. Humans are created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore...
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...The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, or the study on The Effects of Untreated Syphilis in Negro Male, as it was officially titled, was a research project conducted in Macon County in the state of Alabama between 1932 and 1972, with 600 black men as the subjects, of which 399 had been identified as syphilitic and 201 were part of the non-syphilitic control group (Jones 1993; Baker et al. 2005). The Macon County was chosen because of the high rate of syphilis prevalence among the black population there (Baker et al. 2005). Funded by the United States Public Health Services (USPHS) and led by a team of physicians and other health care providers, the experiment was aimed at understanding the effects of syphilis among black men, if left untreated....
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...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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...epidemiologic approach. In addition to the scientific contribution of this investigation, an outstanding illustration of international scientific cooperation has been demonstrated. The remarkable degree of success in obtaining significant information on approximately 80 per cent of the study group, 1,404 Norwegian residents of Oslo of 1891–1910, was undoubtedly due to the careful planning which preceded the tracing efforts. This planning included: (a) a consideration of the nature, extent, and significance of the problem of untreated syphilis; (b) an appraisal of existing information on the subject; (c) the setting up of hypotheses to be tested and questions to be answered; and (d) a detailed outline for a practical experiment design. The pretracing experiment design comprised: the selection of the study group; the listing of possible sources of information; a...
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...The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was an unforgettable case conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama by the U.S. 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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...The Tuskegee Syphilis Study began in 1936 in Macon County, Alabama, at the Tuskegee Institute. Researchers at the institute conducted this study to follow the natural course of syphilis in black males. Before the study was put into progress, there was no known treatment for syphilis. In this study, there was a total of 600 men, 399 of which were infected with syphilis, and 201 who were not. These 201 men were used as the control group of the study. Most of these men were poor and uneducated sharecroppers that were living in Macon County at the time of the experiment ("About the USPHS Syphilis Study"). This experiment was originally supposed to last about six months, but continued for 40 years ("U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee")....
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...The Tuskegee Experiment was an infamous medical research done on African- American men who were seeking free medical treatment. Patients were being tested for bad blood which is a variety of illness. The men had syphilis, which is an is a sexually transmitted disease, but they had no knowledge of it. The men received placebos even when penicillin became a vaccine in 1942 for the treatment of syphilis. The experiment was demeaning and highly involved racial discrimination "During the 1920s, researchers of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) developed plans to study the response of black males to disease, hypothesizing that the response would differ from that of white males. In Macon County, Alabama, nearly forty percent of black males tested positive for syphilis and researchers believed that this community would be ideal to study disease progression." (Nelson R., Cameron. In Remembrance There Is Prevention: A Brief Review...
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...The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Some Ethical Reflections 75 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Some Ethical Reflections Adebayo A. Ogungbure Department of Philosophy University of Ibadan, Nigeria philosopher.bayo@yahoo.com Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya (PAK) New Series, Vol.3 No.2, December 2011, pp.75-92 thoughtandpractice@gmail.com http://ajol.info/index.php/tp/index Abstract There are established 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...
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...Human trial experiments had existed for a very long time. Informed consent should be made mandatory in this type of experiment to prevent innocent people suffering from injustice such as injury and death. This is because every human being has a right to their own body. Every injury or death cause by other people can cause commotion and indirectly lead to war. Informed consent was already mentioned by Claude Bernard in 20th century. He mentioned that the experiment involving human should never be carried out if it has harmful effects even though the benefits are large. Informed consent is a process whereby the patients, clients and research participants are all fully aware of every detail in a process including the potential benefits and risks. Consent must be given voluntarily for valid informed consent. Nazi’s experiment was the example of experiment that did not apply this concept. During World War II, Nazi’s doctors carried out abundance of cruel human experiments under force including freezing, twin, poison, artificial insemination and many more. In one twin experiment, Dr. Josef Mengele ripped out a baby directly from its mother’s womb and left the baby in an oven. From my points of view, there was no control over the Nazi’s experiment as there was no authority which stood up to prove that their action was wrong. Nazis felt that their action was legally correct as they carried out this experiment under the pressure of military needs. I think it also because of the victims...
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... 1 Introduction The United States has been known for its role in different research. The era of the 1960’s proved to bring some interesting practices in society. It was a time that curiosity found its way into science, psychotherapy, and experimental social pleasure. The 1960’s the United States saw the government; specifically the CIA conduct experiments on the hallucinogenic drug, LSD. They used a host of individuals from the military to the mentally ill. In an effort to justify the experiments they relied on earlier research and the potential for military warfare. Researchers did not inform participates of the fact that they were taking LSD. To add to the lack of honesty and integrity they were not aware it would expose their gametes to possible damage. Researchers also used information of participates data forms to track individuals thought to be dissident during a period of wars. After all the experiments and chances taken by research subjects; they compromised lives and future generation and made LSD illegal in the latter 1960’s. Final Assessment 2 1. To what extent did the government have an obligation to inform the research subjects of possible genetic damage to their future offspring? The United States Government is as any other...
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...Bioethics- Tuskegee Syphilis Study BACKGROUND FACTS In the early 70s, the Washington Evening Star newspaper published this headline on its front page: "Syphilis Patients Died Untreated." (CDC) This headline revealed one of America's most dishonorable medical studies, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. From this very moment, the public knew the long-hidden truth about this notorious study. In 1932, the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) initiated the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Their goal was to investigate stages in advancement of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease caused by bacterium that may cause death if untreated. (CDC) Furthermore, the study wanted to investigate how syphilis affects blacks compared to whites. They hypothesized that whites experienced more neurological complications while blacks experience more cardiovascular complications. The study used 399 poor black sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama with dormant syphilis. An additional 201 healthy, unaffected men that were part of the study served as control subjects. Many bioethical values were largely violated. The physicians conducting the study misled the men from the beginning of the experiment. They purposely told men that they had “bad blood” and that they would treat them. Instead, these men were given a placebo. Physicians made sure that they did not receive treatment or help from anyone else. The reward for this “therapy” was free meals, free medical examinations and free burial insurance...
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...The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Some Ethical Reflections 75 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Some Ethical Reflections Adebayo A. Ogungbure Department of Philosophy University of Ibadan, Nigeria philosopher.bayo@yahoo.com Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya (PAK) New Series, Vol.3 No.2, December 2011, pp.75-92 thoughtandpractice@gmail.com http://ajol.info/index.php/tp/index Abstract There are established 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...
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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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...When asked if Institutional Review Boards are necessary, or at least beneficial, for research teams to work with, most people will readily say yes. “For ethical standards” is the mantra for this, as indeed, there have been instances in the government research sector itself when projects, funded by federal money, violated the very principles that the nation was founded upon. Most notable of these is the Tuskegee Experiment. When the Washington Evening Star newspaper made public the existence of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in which dozens of black men were allowed to die without treatment, nearly everyone decried that there should have been an impartial board of people to oversee the experiment and, if necessary, terminate the project. Such is a prime example of how the existence of Institutional Review Boards would have helped ensure that experiments and studies seek to preserve the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and not undermine them. That being said, one can likewise understand how the presence of Institutional Review Boards can hinder and delay the research process. There is a pernicious enemy: bureaucratic red tape. Having to go through channels and procedures can hold up research and delay the oft-times crucial publication of results, or sometimes even muzzle it completely, as in the case of one researcher who was barred from using her own research despite it being privately funded. Instances like these raise some questions concerning the role of...
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