Tuskegee Syphillis Study

Abstract

Over 70 years ago, the U.S. Public Health Service considered ways to improve the health of African Americans in the south. According to Tuskegee Institute (2003) came up with a study of syphilis in Tuskegee, Alabama called the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The Public Health Service and the Rosenwald fund collaborated in treating these individuals. Subsequently, the treatment program was expanded to include five additional counties: Albemarle County, Virginia; Glynn County, Georgia; Macon County, Alabama; Pitt County, North Carolina; and Tipton County, Tennessee (Jones, 1981). The Public Health Service donated their support of the Tuskegee Institute.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study has become the most transcendental, harm-maker example of racism in the medical field. It is shameful, for in an area as important as the medical one, where lives come and go, issues such as this one should never be taken in consideration by anyone who’s capable of destroying or saving a life. It has been shown through the years that it was an unethical experiment, and it has brought resentments that we still face in this time of life.

It prone many African Americans, who were not aware, to decay their health, and to consequently loose their trust over the health system and organizations through out the United States, and even to the people. Disregarding the lives it took, and many people who suffered from it, the Study made much harm in a social context than any other experiment in the history of medicine. In my point of view, it affected the society in which we live today in the three following features.

First and most important of all. It damaged the trust that many African Americans had toward the health system. It always has been known that in order for something to work, people must first believe in it. A system can’t and will not work as it should, when members of the group whom are going to be benefited from it, believe that in exchange, they could be harmed. It is never going to go forward since members of the society which feed this system are pulling it backwards and they have a reason and even a right to not be looking forward to seek help from the health system. The only good thing this event brings is that, to see the offense the members of the white society who participated in the Tuskegee Study created, is going to let other members of the medical field realize that there is work to do and liberate African Americans from that distrust.

I would not like to generalize, since I am pretty sure not every African American feels this way toward the health system, but I will take the statistics that show that a good number of African American populations does not or did not at some point, trust in some way the health system. The second reason, and a very important one is that this Report Consequently Made People Fear For Their Lives. It was the realization of a chain of events.

In my opinion, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was an act of severe mistreating and humiliation towards the African American race. There is nothing positive to say about the way the study was conducted. The Study was morally and ethically wrong. Personally, I feel that the most deceitful thing about the entire study is the fact that the patients