Saturday, September 11, 2010
Patients side
After reading the information on the Tuskegee syphilis experiment I was of course very disturbed and saddened by what happened to these men. But being black myself I cant help but think about if I was a black man back during the time when the study was going on. I would have had pretty close to no rights and nothing going for me. I would have been a sharecropper struggling to make ends meat everyday. At the time, if someone came to me and asked me to take part in a study and told me I would get my medical bills, my meals and my burial insurance for free I would probably do it. Try and put yourself in the shoes of a black man back during the time of this study. Think about what you would have going for you and what you can gain from doing this study. Does this change your mind? What would you do?
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This is an interesting way of looking at this kayla. If I was one of the men who was in the study I would have been really happy to have my medical bills paid etc. I would probably feel like I was really lucky. But what about when penicillin was discovered? Did the men know there was a cure and just wanted to keep receiving the free benefits or were they purposely kept in the dark? If I was a black man at this time I would want to do what was best for me and my family and that would be to participate in the study until the cure came along and then, if I could, I would seek that.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you, if i was in their shoes i too would agree to take part in this experiment. I would think that this would be an easy way to support my family and care for them. When you think about it, and picture this happening to yourself, you can understand how the doctors cheated them and lied to them, and in a way, used the 'then current' curcumstances to in a way force them to take part in the experiment. Even after the studies, one of the doctors told that they had no interest in these men until they died. And even after finding the cure for this disease the men weren't treated for it.
ReplyDeleteI also agree. I would have jumped on the opportunity to get medical care and a paid burial. As one of the subjects of the test, however, I probably wouldn't even have realized that a cure was found. What if these black men weren't part of this study? Do you think they would have been able to pay for the penicilin? If not, does that make it justifiable to use them in the experiment?
ReplyDeleteI think this all comes back to the idea that they really had no reason not to do this study. Too them this study was perfectly clean and legitimate. There had been no previous, highly publicized cases of scientific experiments taking advantage of their patients so they had nothing to fear. the risk was certainly outweighed by the benefit. If i was in their situation i would have done the same thing.
ReplyDeleteHolly makes a good point that can be expanded upon. The black participants were given good treatment and care for everything other than penicillin. If they had been on their own they would be hopelessly poor. The penicillin treatment could have been an expense that they couldn't have paid for. They were kept alive longer by the treatment from the scientists and if they were to die they knew that they weren't burdening their family. Considering the hopelessness that many African American families experienced perhaps even including the dying this would have still been the better option. It is racist and twisted yet many blacks had it worse.
ReplyDeleteKayla i agree with you because if i was in their situation i would have gone along with the testing as well. With the information that these men were given there really was no question on why they wouldnt participate in this.I mean they were bribed with a lot of stuff that helped them medically like free medicine and such, but isnt it a little strange that the scientists forgot to mention a minor detail that this testing is most likely going to kill them? To me these poor innocent men got played and there really was no way around it.
ReplyDeleteI would like to agree with Holly and Connor. Had I been in their place, I would have gladly participated in the study having been told that I would be treated for syphillis. I think that the scientists tricked the men into thinking that they were being "cured" for a disease, not letting on that actually the men were being mistreated out of curiosity to know the outcome of syphillis without treatment. I think, having explored the patients' side, we must also analyze the scientists' reasons for doing what they did- they experienced what their patients did, watching them suffer, dying slowly of a horrible disease that was eating away at their immune system, a disease that, if not for racism, could have been cured instantaneously. In their place, would you have done the same thing? Refuse to help another when the cure was right in your hands? I think racism can account for the behavior of these scientists; because these men were black, and not viewed as men at all in society, the scientists felt morally just for not administering a cure, or even informing the patients of a cure once penicillin was obtained and able to be administered. Back to the patients' point of view, if the men had known that there was a cure, would they have still gone on with the study, knowing that they were not being cured nor even treated for their disease? I have to think that such a cure for so many diseases as penicillin would have been highly publicized, whether or not these men were literate, could they have somehow known that a cure had been found? Or was their trust for the scientists greater than their curiosity and willing to rid themselves of the syphillis. I would have tried to obtain the penicillin, but if I had been unsuccessful at doing so, I would have continued on with the experiement, hoping that I would be cured (or treated) for the disease in some way, however abstract or indirect.
ReplyDeleteI understand that from a black man's point of view, perhaps the offer may seem better than it appears now. However, I think that the main issue is the whether what the scientist's did was ethical or not. Treating the patients well, and providing them food, transportation and paying for medical bills is all well and good, yet they deliberately missed out on the most important aspect, treating a life threatening disease, and because of that, many died. If it were my choice, I would much rather be alive and poor, than die after being well taken care of. Also, being poor is what made the blacks an easy target, and to prey upon that weakness was unethical of the sceintists to do as well.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tanya if I were a black man back then there would be no way in Gods creation that I would trust a white man with my health. However I do see the other points about how they were poor and wante their families to be taken care of. It's so unethical what the doctors did to these poor men. They deceived them right into the grave.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nicole that what the doctors did was unethical and they deceived the black men. Although during the time, as a black man I would not trust a white man, I think I would have still joined the study because I knew that I would die from the disease so I could at least attempt to get better and make the financial burden of the burial easier on my family. Even if I did know about penicillin, I probably could not afford it so the free medical care offered was the closest possible to finding a cure. Since I would be uneducated and uninformed, I might think the experiment would somehow be connected with penicillin since the doctors were viewed as advanced.
ReplyDeleteI agree with kayla's point of view that racism did play a major role in how the doctors carried out this experiment. As a black man during this time period, I too, as many of you guys agreed, would've taken the opportunity even though there was a slim chance that they would be harming my health. Even during this time, nobody wants to believe that doctors would play with something as precious as a person's life because it is their responsibility to "fix", not to "kill". I found Gloria's point very interesting because she said she would've joined the experiment anyways if it could at least attempt to get her health back and make the financial burden of the burial easier on the family. To be honest, I would rather not have my family helped in the hands of murderers. Also if the participants were aware that they were being treated with unknown methods/medications, they would've weighed out the risks and possibly chosen a different way of taking care of their disease.
ReplyDeleteSolely from the patients point of view, I would have to agree that I would have opted to take part in the experiment.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'm sure if black people were given the proper education back then so they are capable of making better decisions on their own, I'm positive that many of the men would not have taken place in this.
I feel like this is a big reason that the scientists chose black men to study because they were (in general) less educated than white people at the time.
As said many times before, I definitely would have taken part in the experiment. These men were obviously lied to, and I am left to wonder if they even knew about the cure, or was that just another thing the doctors did not tell them about?
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if the men were more educated at the time they would have necessarily made a "better decision". Maybe the doctors could have deceived educated white men too.
I would have to agree with nearly everyone here in saying that if I were in the patient's shoes I would've jumped at the chance provided by these doctors. However, in response to Jill's comment, I think that even if the patients knew of the cure, I don't know if they would've made the connection between themselves and the cure. After all, many were told that they were merely being treated for "bad blood". So I don't know if they would've been able to know that that was their cure. So I think that it's just another thing that the doctors didn't tell them about.
ReplyDeleteIt is obvious that since those men were not informed of the real reason they were being experimented on, is why they decided to take part in the tests, they didn't see a bad side to this experiment, or wasn't informed about this experiment as a whole. Even after the cure was found, these men had not received treatment. One of the doctors: "we have not further interest in them until they die." If the black men where educated on this matter they would have known that they cure was found, and fighted the doctors to recieve the cure.
ReplyDeleteOne other view that i have is, even if the black men where informed... would they decide not to take part in the experiment? Think about it, they were offered free medi-care, and many other services for themselves and their family. Wouldn't they agree to the experiments if they were offered something in life that they never expected to recieve? Especially when they are poor, wouldn't these free services be seen as a great gift for them?
Everyone has made great points about how the patients were lied to and if we were in their shoes, we would have made the same decision. Obviously, if they were told the whole experiment, they would have known they were being treated wrongly and would not have participated, however they were not aware of any details so it seemed like a good deal. I do agree with dyna wilston because these men were being granted a dream they thought would never come true and that was to receive free health care. Like dyna quoted, these doctors wanted to see the results of their study which basically meant they wanted to see how long these men could survive with this disease before they died. As we have all seen, this is a very controversial issue and goes against many ethical views. However, looking at the good side of the study, the scientists did gather a lot of information and learned from this study. Even though penicillin was already discovered, the scientists were still able to gather data of how it affected African American men.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to put myself in their shoes i would have done the same thing, however i wonder when the blacks were studied until death, did the patients know that they were going to die. I also agree that the scientists were wrong and they took advantage of the situation
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