Healthcare providers have an ethical obligation to tell their patients the truth about their conditions as well as all possible treatment options. In the Tuskegee Study, this obligation was blatantly disregarded. The characters Dr. Sam Brodus, Dr. Douglas, and Eunice Evers, RN are prime examples of this disregard for transparency between the provider and the patient. Prior to the beginning of the study, the doctors decided to withhold the official diagnosis from their patients. Instead, of telling the patients that they were infected with syphilis they chose to tell them they had bad blood. This was a decision made as a group, however, the provider’s individual reasoning was different. Miss Evers wanted to tell them …show more content…
that they had bad blood because it would be a term that the men in the study would understand. Dr. Brodus wanted to use the alternate wording so the men would not be scared off by their diagnosis. Dr. Douglas initially did not understand that the medical terminology would not be understood by the men in the study and attempted to use it to describe their condition. When they did not understand Miss Evers explained it again in laypeople’s’ terms. After this Dr. Douglas saw the possible benefits of using alternate terminology for describing the men’s conditions. The issue, in this case, arises when the doctors go from using alternate terminology to help their patients understand their condition to using alternate terminology to withhold information from their patients. This problem becomes the most prevalent during the second part of the study once treatment is stopped.
The providers actively decide to deceive their patients. They spend the money the government gives them on placeboes. They tell the patients that they are receiving treatment when they are in fact not. This is compounded by the fact that initially, they believe they will get funding for treatment. Miss Evers is told that those in the study will be “first in line” for treatment when an effective treatment becomes available. The first to realize that this is not, in fact, true are the two doctors, Dr. Sam Brodus and Dr. Douglas. Ten years into the study when penicillin is show as an effective cure for syphilis they make the decision not to treat the men. At this point they are no longer doing the study to buy time until they can get treatment for the men, rather they are withholding treatment to watch the men gone through the full range of symptoms that accompany syphilis including death. Still, if the need for dead bodies to autopsy was a requirement of the studies completion and a primary indicator the success of the studies main objective, then the doctors knew from the beginning that they were not buying time until they got treatment for the afflicted men. It is possible they deceived themselves to a certain extent but it is entirely clear that they deceived Miss Evers. She believed that it would only be six months to a year until the men got treatment. Then, after that, she believed for ten years that they men would be first in line once there was a proven treatment. When this became clear it was not the case she questioned the doctors. They convinced her the study had a greater purpose aside from curing the men in it. She wanted to believe it and in many ways, she forced herself to believe it. Still, when viewing the withholding of treatment as unjust she attempted to administer treatment herself. This resulted in a patient committing suicide in a
fit of dementia. Though the death was caused poison, not the penicillin she administered to the patient Dr. Brodus refused to treat any of the other men in the study with penicillin. This led to the progressive deaths of many of the men in the study. The initial reasoning for alternate terminally was making the patients understanding of their condition a priority. Later this reasoning shifted putting the result of the study and the interest of the doctors ahead of the patient’s safety and health. The reason that Dr. Brodus and Dr. Douglss stayed convinced that they were doing what right toward the end of the study was because they were focused on the results of the study. Miss Evers was focused on the well-being of the patients which is both why she saw the objective of the study as ultimately unethical.
The disease was viewed as a black man’s disease due to its vast spread in the black race community. In this chapter, it is clear that the medical fraternity had formed opinion of the disease even before the start of the experiment. The theme of racial prejudice is brought out clearly in this chapter. The blacks are discriminated from the whites even after learning that syphilis can affect both races alike. The slaves received treatment like their masters just because of economic concerns and not because they were human like their masters. In chapter 3 “Disease Germs Are the Most Democratic Creatures in the World”, the writer points out that the germ theory changed the way syphilis is viewed in the society. It was clear that other emphasis such as sanitation, education and preventative medicine was necessary to combat the disease. The areas inhabited by the blacks were behind in healthcare facilities and service. In this chapter, the theme of unequal distribution of resources is seen. Whereas areas inhabited by the whites had better hospitals and qualified professionals to deal with the
The book BAD BLOOD: THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT by James H. Jones was a very powerful compilation of years of astounding research, numerous interviews, and some very interesting positions on the ethical and moral issues associated with the study of human beings under the Public Health Service (PHS). "The Tuskegee study had nothing to do with treatment it was a nontherapeutic experiment, aimed at compiling data on the effects of the spontaneous evolution of syphilis in black males" (Jones pg. 2). Jones is very opinionated throughout the book; however, he carefully documents the foundation of those opinions with quotes from letters and medical journals. The book allowed the reader to see the experiment from different viewpoints. This was remarkable because of the initial feelings the reader has when first hearing of the experiment. In the beginning of the book, the reader will see clearly there has been wrong doing in this experiment, but somehow, Jones will transform you into asking yourself, "How could this happen for so long?"
Based on the video Deadly Deception the following essay will analyze and summarize the information presented from the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment. The legal medical experimentation of human participant must follow the regulation of informed consent, debrief, protection of participants, deception or withdrawal from the investigation, and confidentiality; whether, this conducted experiment was legitimate, for decades, is under question.
Those who were affected by the testing in hospitals, prisons, and mental health institutions were the patients/inmates as well as their families, Henrietta Lacks, the doctors performing the research and procedures, the actual institutions in which research was being held, and the human/health sciences field as a whole. Many ethical principles can be applied to these dilemmas: Reliance on Scientific Knowledge (1.01), Boundaries of Competence (1.02), Integrity (1.04), Professional and Scientific Relationships (1.05), Exploitative Relationships (1.07, a), Responsibility (2.02), Rights and Prerogatives of Clients (2.05), Maintaining Confidentiality (2.06), Maintaining Records (2.07), Disclosures (2.08), Treatment/Intervention Efficacy (2.09), Involving Clients in Planning and Consent (4.02), Promoting an Ethical Culture (7.01), Ethical Violations by Others and Risk of Harm (7.02), Avoiding False or Deceptive Statements (8.01), Conforming with Laws and Regulations (9.01), Characteristics of Responsible Research (9.02), Informed Consent (9.03), and Using Confidential Information for Didactic or Instructive Purposes (9.04), and Debriefing (9.05). These particular dilemmas were not really handled until much later when laws were passed that regulated the way human subjects could be used for research. Patients
The health professionals were supposed to protect and provide care and treatment to those suffering, in this case from syphilis. Those professionals had taken oaths, but instead they did immoral and illegal things. The health professionals were supposed to help to treat the subject’s disease because it was treatable but ended up causing even more suffering for them for years by watching the experiment subjects suffer and die without any treatment. Miss Ever was torn, yet continued to help Dr. Brodus, the physician that supposedly was treating patients in need but ended up killing slowly them without medication. Eunice urged her boy friends to continue the study, in the hope of future treatment, but the treatment never came, even though the antidote, penicillin, had become available. I, the audience, watched Miss Evers struggle throughout the story with the pros and cons of her choices and decisions. On one hand, she wants to support the experiment; yet, on the other, she wants to protect and comfort her friends. At one point, she stole penicillin to help one of her boys, but he ended up killing himself because of his excruciating suffering for decades. So American citizens, because of the experiment, did not put any trust because of the complicity and lack of affirmative care of medical professionals in America’s public health
The name of the study came from Dr. Brodus and what the experiment was on. Which turns to be years and finally it was exposed, what they were doing? So they called Syphilis another name which is “Bad Blood” which mean the same thing, but in their language. They were saying “Your general areas will collapse and stop working”. Ms. Evers had to tell the doctor to let her explain because the men didn’t know what they were saying.
Throughout the ages, while the origins to this day continue to be debated, the strength and potency of the disease have rarely been in question. Syphilis, while not viewed as a huge threat due to a decreased number of cases in the mid-late 1990s, needs to be taken more seriously by the public because it is more dangerous than many realize, especially because it is extremely contagious, it is extremely elegant in the symptoms it produces, it has played a larger part in history than many would think, and there is a certain stigma which surrounds the disease, which in turn pushes individuals away from receiving the necessary testing.
DNLee showed the doctors and scientists side when he pointed out that “scientists can become blinded by our own ambitions to pursue an answer, complete an experiment and be tempted to ignore every ethical and moral principle in order to get that data point… the researcher does whatever mental exercise needed that would allow his human subjects to suffer from Syphilis complications despite the availability of an effective and affordable cure because that subject is no longer his own individual.” When ambitiously searching for an answer, many may become ignorant to the effects their actions cause to others not directly involved with their research. In the case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, this happens to be the families related to the victims of the study. The scientists and doctors in the study never intended for the significant others and children of participants to be harmed physically or mentally.
The U.S. Public Health Service conducted this new experiment study which consisted of 399 men with syphilis and 201 men without syphilis for forty years, from 1932 to 1972. There was a total of six hundred men who participated in this study. In 1932, the Public Health Service collaborated with the Tuskegee Institute, an African American university which was founded by Booker T. Washington. The men that were chosen for this study were illiterate and were sharecroppers from Alabama. The syphilis rate in Macon County was the highest with a 39.8%. The Tuskegee study became morally and ethically wrong when penicillin became available to treat syphilis and was denied to the participants of the study. The study broke many ethical rules. The participants were told that if they participated, they were going to receive free medical care for their “bad blood.” The men were never informed what they were actually being treated for. Unfortunately, these men accepted because they were getting free healthcare and that is what they desired since they were very poor.
For example, in class we watched a film about first the unethical and criminal Tuskegee experiments, in which doctors watched the progression of syphilis in black men in Alabama without informing the men that they had syphilis and that they could treat it, when they could. Human rights lawyer Terry Cullingsworth states that, “The fact that they went to Guatemala is partly at least due to t...
The study was necessary because syphilis was a disease that didn’t yet have an official cure when the study began in the 30’s. There were 600 men in all; 399 had syphilis and 201 served as a control group for the experiment. The subjects lacked money and education to understand what exactly was going on and couldn’t give informed consent, but “the researchers offered incentives: free physical exams, hot meals, and rides into town on clinic days, plus fifty-dollar burial stipends for their families when the men died” (50). Therefore, they didn’t question the doctors about what they were doing. During the experiment on the hundreds of African Americans, the doctors found out that they could cure them with penicillin.
This essay will examine truth-telling in terms of patient autonomy verses the physical and psychological harm it could bring, Dealing with a number of key issues that have been identified during my
Public Health Service conducted an experiment on 400+ African-American male sharecroppers. The men were given syphilis, without their consent, by white doctors who intended to trace the evolution of the disease to learn its effect on the human were not warned about the effects the disease would have on their bodies, and were not given any treatment. The men were deceived into believing they were patients in a government study, and after 40 years, more than 100 men had died from either syphilis or related complications.This is important to my research paper because it uncovers an illegal, unethical experiment on black bodies, and suggests that many more like it may have been
The men were coerced with money and were not provided with the freedom to participate or not, ask questions, or have the specifics of the study explained to them. It was an injustice to deny them treatment for their diagnosed disease and to deny them the explanation of all that the study entailed. Beneficence was violated because the researchers did not maximize benefits of the study and knew they were harming the men by withholding antibiotics and treatment for their syphilis. The well-being of those well-meaning and innocent participants was, in my opinion, disregarded to the highest and most severe and devastating degree.
Then include who tried to bring attention to the study but failed. Include analysis of that? The Tuskegee Syphilis Study ended in July of 1972, when public attention arised with the help of Peter Bruxtun informing Washington Star of the study. The publicity of the study eventually resulted in the creation of the the National Research Act of 1974 (Cringer, Caplan, and Edgar). This established that research performed on people in biomedical and behavioral research must ensure that all of their rights are being given. Similarly, the “act prompted the development of regulations that require colleges, universities, and other institutions receiving federal funds to establish institutional review boards (IRBs) to protect the rights of research volunteers” (Eleanor and Levine 148). This change is a crucial step in improving the way that participants in research are treated; the volunteers are required to fully understand the study being conducted and the procedures that occur throughout the study. They are given a chance to ask questions in order to do so. These regulations significantly limit the number of unethical studies that would occur since they have to be approved by the IRB, which protects the rights of an individual. The authors explain how IRB’s have needed to apply the rules of the act into a biomedical and clinical perspective (Eleanore and Levine 149). Do I agree with