915653095 Dr. Brian Hutler 29 February 2024 Honors Ethics in Medicine Prompt 1: The Tuskegee Study and the Belmont Report The Tuskegee Study has been one of the most notorious missteps of the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), with research conducted between 1932 and 1972. The study monitored the long-term effects of untreated syphilis in African American men residing in Macon County, Alabama. The study's original basis was to test how the long-term effects of untreated syphilis compared to the treatment of the disease at the time, an arsenic-containing compound known as salvarsan. Researchers told participants they were being treated for “bad blood,” a cultural belief that covers a variety of ailments, including syphilis. In exchange
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First, the overwhelming problem with this study is that the risks vastly outweighed the knowledge gained from the study. Ten years into the study, after which they already had gathered plenty of data from what would still be an unethically run study, penicillin was discovered and determined to be the best course of treatment for syphilis. By 1943, the US military had already been using it in World War II and multiple studies guaranteed its effectiveness against syphilis. Instead of providing the infected population with penicillin, the study still went on for another 29 years, inflicting unnecessary harm on patients. In addition, the patients unknowingly were putting their families at risk, as syphilis still could have been contagious, further spreading it to the community. This is a very large risk that cannot be justified, knowing that this will proliferate the disease. Secondly, there was an absence of informed consent. As mentioned before, the men in this study believed that they were receiving treatment for “bad blood,” not syphilis, which reveals a lack of education on the disease that they were being studied
First, the overwhelming problem with this study is that the risks vastly outweighed the knowledge gained from the study. Ten years into the study, after which they already had gathered plenty of data from what would still be an unethically run study, penicillin was discovered and determined to be the best course of treatment for syphilis. By 1943, the US military had already been using it in World War II and multiple studies guaranteed its effectiveness against syphilis. Instead of providing the infected population with penicillin, the study still went on for another 29 years, inflicting unnecessary harm on patients. In addition, the patients unknowingly were putting their families at risk, as syphilis still could have been contagious, further spreading it to the community. This is a very large risk that cannot be justified, knowing that this will proliferate the disease. Secondly, there was an absence of informed consent. As mentioned before, the men in this study believed that they were receiving treatment for “bad blood,” not syphilis, which reveals a lack of education on the disease that they were being studied