Tuesday, September 7, 2010
What is this world coming to?
I see this whole experiment as an attempt to target the black population. To me this whole experiment seems pointless. The men that participated were told little to no information. An article said, "By the end of the experiment 28 of the men had died directly, 100 were dead of related complications, and 19 of their children had been born with it." These doctors telling them that they were being treated with "remedies" was a lie. In fact they were being treated with aspirin. Quite the cure isnt it?? I see this as an attempt to eliminate a chunk of the black population in the area also as an attempt of torture. Even after a cure was discovered the men were denied the opportunity to take it. Sure they were given free hospital treatment and meals, but it also came with the price of being buried in the ground for eternity which they were not aware of. Even a doctor said that if they knew the price of death was attached every "darky" would leave the experiment. My question is was this an act of torture or was this a genuine experiment?
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I agree with Nicole, those doctors were just using the black men as laboratory mice. These black men were not informed competely on what they were being tested for, they were rather told that they were being tested for 'bad blood', and they brought the uneducated black men into a situation where they were forced to accept the offer of free medi-care. Even one of the doctors had told that they had no interest in the tested men until those men died. The doctors lied and cheated the black men into agreeing with them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Dyna and Nicole that the doctors were just treating the men like lab mice but I'm not sure I would go as far as to call it torture. It was cruel and unethical for sure but I think it's possible that it was also genuine experiment. I think torture implies cruelty for the sake of being cruel and perhaps the doctors really were being unethical and racist in the name of science. Just because the scientists and doctors lied to the men and cheated them into being part of it does not make it any less of an experiment than if they had been honest and not treated the men cruelly.
ReplyDeletei disagree sarah because when you look for active test subjects and they volunteer there should be a fair level of treatment, and the way they where treated it was inhuman given a placebo and when the actual cure came out what happened to the free checkups and cures for their bad blood? this was a way to leave a large portion of a population to go and die without any treatment.
ReplyDeleteI somewhat agree with nicole, I agree that this was torture and total racism. However, they did need to find a cure for the disease. They did got about it the wrong way but they did need to do the experiments to find a cure.
ReplyDeletei agree with nicole that this was just an attempt to get rid of the minority in tuskegee. There were many black share croppers in the area at the time and i believe they wanted to eliminate a good chunk of them. if not they would have asked other white males to join in the expirement too. just the fact that the only people participating in the expirements were black males is extrememly sketchy.
ReplyDeleteI agree with nicole that the whole expirement seems pointless because it looks like the group of scientests are just targeting people. In the tuskegee university artical it states that they took 600 black men and some with and some without the disease and all they did was tell them that there getting cured. They never took any white people or really told any of the men that participated anything that was going on. It seems like they were just targeting black people and trying to get rid of them in a way that seemed like it would do good for everyone but it really didnt
ReplyDeleteI believe that this cannot be considered in act of torture because they were attempting to study syphilis. There choice of patients was definitely not a ethical way of choosing. Also the fact that they never treated the men with syphilis, was also a terrible thing to do after they seemed to contribute to this study. The reason I don't think this should be considered torture is that a majority of these men had syphilis going into the experiment and therefore without the experiment could not have afforded the cure and would have died none the less. I would call what this experiment did, "taking advantage of" the black race and their ignorance to the scientific study.
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention the act of torturing Blacks it kind of does make sense. Back during this time period they would do anything to get rid of Blacks. Whoever had this much of a twisted mind to start the experiment must have really wanted Blacks to be wiped off the face of the earth.
ReplyDeleteI agree somewhat with Nicole but disagree with Angela. At this time there was no common edict for people participating in experiments. The scientist weren't expected to inform the patients and didn't need to treat them "fairly" once they agreed to the study. It is only because of this experiment that there is informed consent.
ReplyDeleteTo the question of was this torture, I believe it wasn't torture at first because they weren't harming the men at all. After penicilin was found; however, then they were purposefully making the men die. That was torture.