Monday, September 6, 2010
How Wrong Was It?
Clearly the Tuskegee study is an ethical dilemma. There are many people who are and were angered by the actions of the doctors who performed the experiment. On one of the websites it said that president Clinton made a formal apology to those who were affected by the study even though he himself was never involved. However, one of the nurses who worked directly in the study said, "We were taught that we never diagnosed, we never prescribed; we followed the doctor's instructions!” The website went on to say that she genuinely felt nothing ethical had been amiss.
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Sarah, in regards to your question, it is my opinion that we are judging the doctors and scientists because we can see the whole study and they had to make decisions without knowing what they effects would be. Like the homecoming date discussion, it is very easy for us to blame them for an unethical study, however, I think they imagined they were doing the men a favor by providing them with the accommodations they did. I am not saying it is the subjects fault, however they did agree to do this study and be tested on. It can be argued that the study was not known to be unethical at the time but the truth is that we will never know what the doctors really thought as they came up with this idea. Therefore, we can use the whole study to judge but we will not know the intention of ethicalness from the doctors.
ReplyDeleteI think that the people in charge of the experiment were aware of what they were doing was wrong. If they were scientists intent on trying to find a cure to help people, why would they be okay with hurting them in the process. That would be counter prodcutive. In addition, if they thought what they were doing was right, then why did'nt they tell the patients what they were in for? If they thought it was something worth disclosing, then they obviously knew it was wrong.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tanya that the people in charge of the experiment knew what they were doing was wrong. I do not think that we are judging them because we can see the whole study because the scientists were presented with positive options, which they ignored and continued to precede with the harmful experiment. The scientists were fully aware of the positive option of penicillin but continued to prevent the black men from being cured. By knowingly inhibiting and furthering the disease state of the black men, the scientists demonstrate they were fully aware their actions as wrong but continued anyways. The scientists could have easily prevented the harm caused by providing the black men with information and penicillin when the cure was discovered.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Gloria. If the cure hadn't been found during the study, I believe it would change my judgement of the doctors. But since the cure had been found, there was NO reason to continue the study. The top doctors obviously knew this. They were at fault. The nurses are a different judgement because they didn't know the whole experiment and it's purpose. They are only guilty of blindly following orders without asking what was really going on.
ReplyDeleteI agree for the most part with everyone that they should've stopped. But, we are talking about scientists here and when they find something they want to find answers to the next question they have. I think that perhaps the scientists might have gotten a little to wrapped up in experimenting. Thus, they used the race as justification to continue with the experimenting.
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