Tuskegee Experiments

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the Tuskegee medical experiments which were conducted by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) between 1932 and 1972 on 399 African-American adult male subjects who were diagnosed as having late stage syphilis. It argues that the Tuskegee experiments were unjustified on moral and ethical grounds and how together with many other examples of scientific experiments in which human beings have been used as unwitting guinea pigs in the twentieth century stand as warnings of the misguided, immoral, racist and even genocidal ends which scientific research sometimes serves. It also briefly examines other medical experiments of the 20th Century in which racial minorities were victimized.

Outline
Facts Concerning the Tuskegee Experiments
Assessment of the Tuskegee Experiments
Broader Implications
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The victims of Nazi experiments who were held against their will in hospitals, prisoner of war camps and concentration camps clearly lacked freedom of choice. It is doubtful whether soldiers who 'volunteer' for such experiments really have much choice, such as the unsuspecting soldiers used in the 1940s and 1950s as participants in the Department of Energy's Human Radiation Experiments (Katz and Owens 6). The Tuskegee participants volunteered but, as noted above, only after having been lied to about the nature of their illness, the treatment they would receive and the risks associated with invasive procedures such as lumbar and spinal taps. The most egregious lies and deceits were committed against the black group of adult males, the principal focus of the Experiments, in order to induce them to participate and to prevent them from seeking treatment elsewhere. However, as Chadwick et al. have pointed out, the group of 201 adult white males who were used as a control group and who did not have syphilis were also deceived. They were told at one point by PHS researchers that they had contracted the disease in order to gauge their levels of psychological stress and to compare them with the stress levels of the blacks under study (16-17)."

More papers on Tuskegee Experiments:

• Research Paper # 15296 : "Tuskegee Experiments, 1932-1972"
• Comparison Essay # 106542 : "The Tuskegee Experiment"
• Term Paper # 107518 : "Tuskegee Experiment"

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