Abstract
AbstractThe United States Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee was the longest “medical experiment” in the United States. It was an unethical study that harmed 623 black men and their families in Macon County, Alabama. There were no protocols, no (simple) informed consent, and no end date, but there was deception. These men had no idea they were in a study. They were vulnerable to those who they thought were medical doctors of good-will, assigned to their community to help cure their “bad blood.” This chapter follows the narratives of two men who were victims of the Study, Mr. Charles Pollard and Mr. Herman Shaw, and a venereal disease expert, Dr. John Cutler, who refused to admit that he and his colleagues did anything wrong. Positive results came from the Study. Informed consent and Institutional Review Boards as requirement to medical treatment and human-subjects experiments. Additionally, the Syphilis Study and men in the Study can teach us what it means to involve empathic care in our ethics and how to understand the role of trustworthiness in our values.
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Reference18 articles.
1. Clement, Grace. 1998. Care, Autonomy and Justice. Feminism and the Ethics of care. Boulder: Westview Press.
2. Clinton, William Jefferson. 1997. Presidential Apology: Remarks by the President in Apology for Study done In Tuskegee. The White House. Office of the Press Secretary, May 16, 1997. https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/textonly/New/Remarks/Fri/19970516-898.html.
3. Cutler, John C. 1988. Dr. Cutler’s Response. American Journal of Public Health 78: 1500.
4. Cutler, John C., and R.C. Arnold. 1988. Venereal Disease Control by Health Departments in the Past: Lessons for the Present. American Journal of Public Health 78 (4): 372–376. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1349362/pdf/amjph00243-0022.pdf.
5. Gray, Fred. 1998. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Montgomery: New South Books.