The Tuskegee Study

In the 1960s and 1970s, a number of ethically questionable research designs came under public scrutiny, raising the issue of ethics for all types of research. The most infamous of these studies was probably the Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted by the U.S. Health Service. This design involved withholding treatment from a group of black males infected with syphilis for 40 years. The purpose of the research was to identify a sample of men with syphilis and to observe the consequences of untreated syphilis over time. The researchers did not infect the men with syphilis, but once the research was under way the researchers actively altered the men's lives and chances of recovery without their awareness or consent. The researchers even worked to minimize the possibility of these men receiving treatment from other med

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as as bad as the disease. As more evidence surfaced, though, it was clear that such an experiment took advantage of those who were poor, black, uneducated, and trusting. The specter of genocide was raised once the dimensions of the study were revealed, and some made links to the Nazi experiments on human subjects during World War II, something that had been condemned by the civilized world at the Nuremburg Trials. In the U.S., other explanations were also offered, from social class distinctions to racial differences, to explain how medical personnel could lend themselves to such a breach of ethics as was inherent in the Tuskegee Study. Jones delves deeply into the issue of race in this book, dredging up a good deal of information about the racist side of the medical profession in the nineteenth century. The medical profession might like to think that such lapses are comfortably in the past, but this book shows that these attitudes persisted into this century and may still be rife in some segments of the profession. Most of what Jones says relates directly to the question of syphilis as a "black" disease, and he notes that the medical profession in the last century was more diffuse and fragmented so that it was easier for phy
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Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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