The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was originally conceived in 1929 by the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) as a method of determining the predominance of syphilis within black communities across America and of identifying a mass treatment. The reason behind this segregation was that physicians believed both white and black people were opposites and reacted differently to diseases. Furthermore, it was widely assumed that syphilis and other widespread venereal conditions accounted for the high rate of crime and miscarriages within African-American municipalities and as of yet, no effective cure had been discovered. As a result, approximately 600 male subjects were recruited from the town of Tuskegee in Macon County, Alabama. Although the ethicality of the experiment at the beginning can be advocated, when it formally began in 1932, the scope had significantly changed. Dr. Taliaferro, then Chief of the USPHS Venereal Disease Division alleged that the procedure now involved observing the subjects while simultaneously telling them they had ‘bad blood’ and would receive free treatment.
Approximately two decades after the instigation of the study, penicillin became widely available and proved to be an effective treatment for many diseases, including syphilis. Nonetheless, the USPHS made many efforts to prevent the study’s subjects from being treated by other organizations. In 1972, Peter Buxton, an employee of the USPHS who had been disputing the moral grounds of the case since six year prior, blew the whistle and brought the study to an end when he leaked the story to a local news reporter. Although the records kept by the USPHS regarding the Tuskegee Syphilis Study were substandard, it is believed that between twenty eight and...
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...man society of benefits and burdens of research involving human subjects. In particular, those participants chosen for such research should not be inequitably selected from groups unlikely to benefit from the work.
This point alludes to discrimination and asserts that medical research should include an equal number of subjects of various sex, race, age, and backgrounds in order to better the human race as a whole. By implementing these parameters into biomedical research, organizations can better civilization while doing so in an ethical manner. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study has raised numerous questions and concerns regarding regulation within professional trades. Doctors and physicians take a Hippocratic Oath and swear to help those around them. This experiment demonstrated why ethics and stringent control measures are required when people’s lives are at stake.
