The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

The Tuskegee Study was initiated in 1932 by the U.S. Public Health Service. The experiment took place in Macon County, Alabama and it was so they could determine the natural course of untreated, latent syphilis in black males. "The research itself took place on the campus of Tuskegee Institute," (About the USPHS Syphilis Study). Syphilis is a disease that starts as a small sore but spreads through time. The Tuskegee study used 200 uninfected men and 400 syphilitic men who didn't receive penicillin even though it became easily accessible in the 1950s. After the first account was printed in the press, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare halted the experiment. Only seventy-four test subjects were still alive after this. An investigation …show more content…
For example, the fourth statement in the code states that the experiment should avoid suffering or injury to the physical or mental health. The study violates this by giving the patients spinal taps. "The USPHS presented this purely diagnostic exam, which often entails considerable pain and complications, to the men as a 'special treatment,'" (Brandt 7). The men were told this was a special treatment but they were just testing them for neurosyphilis, and they were put through pain to get the results. Another example of the Tuskegee Study violating the Nuremberg Code is the seventh statement. It says that they should take whatever measures to keep the patient from injury, disability, and death. The doctors wanted to do autopsies to see the studies results. So they actually wanted the men to pass away so they could test on them. "'As I see it,' responded Wenger, 'we have no further interest in these patients until they die,'" (Brandt 7). The doctors would want this men to pass to see how there study was doing instead of taking precautionary measures to save them and truly treat there syphilis. Sadly the Tuskegee Study showed more about the racism that took place in its time then the treatment

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