Thursday, September 2, 2010
Should they have stopped?
There is no doubt that this was a racist time in our country's history. I believe that this study was terrible but, only after the cure of syphilis was found. Really, in my mind, the notion that these men were just being studied to see the long-term effects of syphilis was grotesque, but at the time the study was started there was no treatment for it anyway. The scientists were not preventing them from being cured of this disease. Granted, the participants were not informed on much. They only knew they were being "treated" for "Bad Blood". It said on the Tuskegee website that "Bad Blood" didn't neccesarily even mean syphilis back then. It also could mean fatigue or anemia. Basically, though, since the men had no other option for a treatment of syphilis at the time of the trial's start, I believe the scientists weren't doing anything that was "ethically unjustable". My question is why the scienists continued the study once the cure for syphilis was discovered? Why didn't they inform the participants that they could be cured from penicilin? This is the unethical act.
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I think not informing the participants of the penicillin cure is an unethical act. The scientists were knowingly withholding information that caused further harm to the participants. I know they were conducting an experiment and did not want penicillin to interfere with their results but in the end their results were not even substantial so what was the point of continuing the experiment for decades? According to infoplease.com, “During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have the PHS exempt them. The experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943), a public health law requiring testing and treatment for venereal disease, and in spite of the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which specified that ‘informed consent’ was needed for experiments involving human beings. ” This demonstrates the scientists were acting unethical by willing to take extreme measures to keep the participants uninformed. Is it alarming and unethical that the scientists were able have the US Public Health service exempt the participants and not following the Henderson Act?
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ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I feel that studying the long term effects of syphillis by simply letting it fester is kind ofpointless. Scientific experiments should be conducted to benifit humans. By simply waiting for the disease to kill the participants in no way could help to find a cure for the disease. Also, later on when the penicillin was available, continuing the study would be pointless since the cure was already found. To answer the question, of course they should have stopped the study. With the cure on hand, the men should have been treated right away and it was unethical fot the Health Services not to do so and makes it seem like the entire experiment had some ulterior motive.
ReplyDeleteThe reason that the disease was left to fester was stated by one of the scientists, it was because the information that they wanted to gather was only important to them when the subjects were dead. This statement is what really makes the study so repulsive. The scientists began the study with the knowledge that they would be watching people die. There were false remedies for syphilis at the time, if they had tried any one of those it would at least show that they were concerned for their subject's lives. Yet they refrained from attempting anything. Therefore the study is an indirect form of mass murder. The scientists really had no viable reason to continue the study once penicillin was discovered, they were either extremely racist or they were so devoted to finding something through the study that they did not care what they had to do. My guess is the first option. Racism was still widespread and strong, the concept of racist southern scientists killing off blacks isn't exactly striking.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reasons the scientics didnt stop was because they had patients that were willing to be tested on. The patients knew basically nothing but that they had "bad blood" The doctor might have thought that while they had these patients they could do some more testing to discover more things. I dont know...Just an idea.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Holly on the fact that the men really didnt have any other option because there was no cure for the disease back then. But even saying so i still don't believe that the scientists intentions in the expirement were good. I feel like the scientists knew that nothing good was to come from the expirement and gave all of those men false hope. i think that is just sick and very unethical.
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