Bad Blood Case Summary

Respect of persons, beneficence, and justice are three principles that are relevant to research (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2014). In this discussion board post, I will be discussing the “Bad Blood” case study, which started in 1932 and ended in 1972. I will give my thoughts on why the participants agreed to participate in the study. I will state the violations of ethical principles and whether an experiment of this kind would be conducted today.
The men in this study were from Macon County, in 1932, who lived in poverty and had likely never been treated for any reason by a medical doctor. The nick name “bad blood” came from the doctors stating that they were testing people for “bad blood”. Thirty-six percent of the African American population in Macon County, tested positive for syphilis. Many of these men agreed to be a part of a control study for syphilis. With funding being discontinued for this study to continue the study was transformed into the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis. The African American participants were not informed that the study had changed to a non-therapeutic study (Fourtner, Fourtner, & Herreid, 2000).

The first reason is because they were receiving free treatment. Medical treatment was not a practicality for this population of people. They lived in poverty and did not have the means to pay for medical care. The second reason that they agreed to be a part of this study is their belief in the doctors to not do harm to them. I think they believed that the treatment given to them was going to make them better. Trust was gained by using African American doctors and nurses to provide the medical care (Fourtner et al., 2000). This trust was used to persuade the men to continue with the study over the course of many