This research paper discusses the Tuskegee medical experiments which were conducted by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) between 1932 and 1972 on 399 African-American adult male subjects who were diagnosed as having late stage syphilis. Its thesis is that the Tuskegee experiments were unjustified on moral and ethical grounds. They together with many other examples of scientific experiments in which human beings have been used as unwitting guinea pigs in the twentieth century stand as warnings of the misguided, immoral, racist and even genocidal ends which scientific research sometimes serves.
Facts Concerning the Tuskegee Experiments
Origins. PHS was founded in 1912. It was an outgrowth of the predominantly white, middle class Progressive movement for political, economic and social reform of the early 1900s. Its founders and the physicians who led PHS during its formative decades were believers in scientific medicine. Their mission was to improve public health through the application of modern scientific knowledge and in particular to reduce the scourge of communicable diseases by raising standards of sanitation, social hygiene and education.
In the 1920s PHS increasingly turned its attention to low health standards in southern rural areas, especially among African-Americans, most of whom were impoverished. By the 1920s, syphilis, an otherwise fatal disease, could be treated by injections of arsenic derivatives supplemented by mercury and bismuth ointments; however, at least 20 to 40 treatments over a year or more were required and the toxic side effects of these drugs had to be carefully monitored. According to Jones, "since blacks [in poor rural areas] consulted physicians only in emergencies, they had to endure chronic diseases like syphilis. The protracted treatment schedule ensured that the few patients who were diagnosed would not be cured" (65). PHS organized a study during 1926-1930 of Macon County, Al...