Even as this research could've been valuable, the ways in which the data was achieved was extremely unethical. During a time of racism, and no laws regulating Consent Forms, it's logical that these 400 men didn't know what they were getting into, but to let them die for it when there was a cure? MEH,, not cool.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Did they really have to "study them to death"?
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment is widely known as a travesty among current populations within the United States. During the experiment, around 400 Black Men were contracted in to a study in which they were told they had "Bad Blood" and not that they had Syphilis. As the experiment went on, there was never any intention to tell them that they weren't actually being treated for this medical study, and there also wasn't any intention to inform the men they were being watched for Syphilis. During the study, the ending goal quickly changed as the cure for Syphilis, Penicillin, became available. These men were to be watched to see the acts of Syphilis on the human body until death. My Overall Question, is why do you think the researchers let these "patients" die off? Couldn't they have at least evaluated the subjects until they were close to death and given them the cure? I know this was a time where Blacks were not regarded as highly as others but really? REALLY? There was no reason for the subjects to not know they had syphilis, and to not know there was a cure. Obviously, the researchers would've known that an eventual effect of Syphilis is death.. Why let the Syphilis progress to such a point? Logically, there should've been a sensical stopping point within the research. Another Appalling fact, is that while procrastinating the spread of medicine like Penicillin to these people, Syphilis would spread even more to the wives, and children of these men.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Considering the time period of the test, the scientist could have gotten away with killing them because of racism. We know that penicillin was already created in 1947, the scientists probably wanted to see how far would the test subject go in order for them to die out. Although idea was careless it may have given the scientist more knowledge about the topic.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the point of the experiment may have originally been to study syphillis, but towards the end, that was'nt the case anymore. Why would they continue to study it if the cure had been found? There was no reason for them to not offer the patients treatment and they refrained from doing so because of racism. This study was just a cover up, and they targeted the black population and were successful in killing the majority of them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your aggravation with this whole situation. Its insane that they would actually do this to people. But I think they were so caught up with the study that they honestly didn't even consider their patients as people. More of objects they were experimenting on and collecting data from. Why save an object when it means nothing to you? You don't. And i honestly think that is what happened to the patients. All their value was lost as humans and no one bothered to care.
ReplyDeleteBaker brought up a really interesting point that I don't want to be glossed over. One of the obvious results of syphilis was death. They already knew that. While it would also be unethical to keep people right at the edge of dying it would have been better than slaughtering them. The question that we would have to ask the scientists is whether or not they could have developed a way to retrieve the findings they needed without killing off the subjects. The study would have been much more humane if the black subjects lived.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Kayla and Connor. I don't think that there was any need for the study to continue once the cure had been found. The scientists probably were too caught up in the experiment to think of the humane point of view. They had stopped seeing the patients as people and just saw them as test rats, except they weren't testing anything on them because they were just watching them die. One of the scientists even said that the data wasn't valid until the patients had died. What I don't get is the goal of the study in the first place, yes syphilis kills black men. This was repeated many times. What did they plan to do with that information?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Holly when she says that the scientists probably thought of them as test rats. I don't think that the studies should've been allowed to have been continued after the cure was found and especially since the patients didn't know exactly what they were being tested for. I think that a good point is brought up about how the diseases didn't just affect the men, it also affected their entire family. So whether or not the scientists wanted to study what exactly it was that caused the syphilis to kill them, I don't think that they should've been able to let them die.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jacky these were people not lab animals. These scientists just let them die. As for their families these men had no information so they thinking they were being cured probably went on to have more children. These children would grow up to have no father thanks to these scientists.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I agree with what everyone had said, I find what nicole said very important. A moral decision that could've easily been made by these scientists from the start was prevented due to their curiosity and murduristic mind set. Even though african americans were seen as a lower class citizen, they are still human. As soon as the scientists decided they were going to sit back and watch the effects of syphillis take over, they decided to become murderers without even knowing it. The discovery of penicillin should have encouraged them to research on how well/fast it cured the disease rather than taking the risk of how to disease persists throughout the body til death.
ReplyDeleteTanya said, "There was no reason for them to not offer the patients treatment and they refrained from doing so because of racism. This study was just a cover up, and they targeted the black population and were successful in killing the majority of them."
ReplyDeleteTo me this makes it seem like the scientists were trying to systematically murder the men in the study like the nazis and the Jews. If you compare the two situations the Nazis didn't care about killing the Jews because they saw them as "less human". I think this was the same way. The white scientists saw the black men as "less human" and that's why they didn't offer them the cure.