Thursday, September 2, 2010

why perform experiments on those who cant read what their getting into?

during the study many of the patients where unaware of what they were being tested for, and blindly took a leap of faith that they would be treated for their bad blood. The patients in the trial also never received the actual cure and many were killed during the experiments and many more became infected. If the patients knew about it they would think twice, the doctors running the trial
gave the patients incentives like free meals and rides to the clinic and they also gave them cirtficate of thanks from the surgon general after being apart of the study for 25 years. after the study ended the patients received no treatment with the cure and had many infected family members or other human beings, shouldn't we have properly informed them of the study regardless of who they are?

7 comments:

  1. ofcourse we should! But i think if the scientists explained to the uneducated men that they would have decided not to take part in the experiment. The doctors never really cared about the men, just the results:

    one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”

    so what i am thinking is, are scientists just after the results? do they just care about their next discovery and not about human beings? Why did they act so immoral to these men? did they have any emotion when they cheated these men and destroyed their families??

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  2. Dyna, I agree the people should have been informed regardless of who they were because we are all human beings that should be treated equally. I think the scientists took full advantage of the people since they were uneducated by giving incentives such as medical care, survival insurance, medical exams, rides to and from the clinics, meals on examination days, free treatment for minor ailments and guarantees that provisions would be made after their deaths in terms of burial stipends paid to their survivors” (www.tuskegee.edu). The scientists also took advantage of the racist time period by targeting specifically blacks. I think scientists are not just after the results because this experiment did not give any substantial results, knowledge to change the treatment of syphilis and did not make new discoveries. I think they acted immoral towards the men because they viewed themselves as superior and did not care about the men. Their racist mindset or upbringings, considering the time period and location, could have caused them to be ignorant of the emotions and families destroyed.

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  3. I believe that the people were actually forced to take the experiment. The condition of these people made it necessary to take what was given. The scientist's offered free health care, and annual check-up. The people were in a way forced because they needed these necessary needs.

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  4. I agree with Gloria. We're all human beings here, and because of that we have a certain standard we must all adhere to when to comes to the way we treat other. This experiment recieved all the bad rep because it went against what society agrees on to be right. It was unethical for the sceintists to carry out experiments that were life threatening for those involved and the fact that the patients were not clearly informed about exactly what they were getting into just makes the situation worse.

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  5. I agree with dyna. this makes me think that all scientists are after are the results. they had no intention to help these men out at all. The men being tested on were lied to. They were brought into testing thinking that they were going to be helped when really if anything the expirements made them worse and not at all better. This is very unethical of the doctors and i dont understand how a human being can just disregard anothers life as if it means absolutely nothing to them.

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  6. I honestly think in this situation the people doing the experiment could care less on how they were experimenting on. adding on to that, being that they were black, the experimenters could care less if they lived or died. it makes me really sad that someone could have such a little care for human life. it makes me sick.

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  7. In my opinion, the reason they chose this population was because they would be the easiest to take advantage of. I don't want to necessarily say they are racist because at this time almost the whole country agreed that blacks were not as good as whites. I don't believe there main motivation was race, but like stated earlier their main motivation was results, and liability. They needed to study on people that they would not be liable for or they could trick into their study easier. This was the obvious choice for the scientists back than because they would be missed the least. Maybe that sounds cynical but that is just my take on it.

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