Racial discrimination has been a severe issue in many American institutions, and it is no surprise that the health care industry is among them. Patients from marginalized communities like people of color receive care and sometimes worse compared to white Americans. The reasons behind include barriers like health care insurance coverage, communication issues, stereotypes based on false beliefs against races. Predictably, the health care outcomes of colored individuals are worse than that of whites. According to studies, African-American patients tend to receive low-quality health services, including cancer, preventive care, or prenatal care. Typically, there has been no time when the health of black people was equal to that of white counterparts because historically, the disparity is built within the system. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and react to a case study- Tuskegee Syphilis.
Consequences to the Study Participants
From the foregoing observations on the case study, it appears that health care experts did not consider ethical standards in clinical research. The rights of participants were violated, and the exercise raised more ethical issues like informed consent, unfair subject selection in the study, racism, truth-telling, justice, and others. Following the ignorance or lack of adherence to ethical practices in this case study, some research participants suffered adverse effects like limb paralysis due to extreme spinal tap procedures conducted to obtain fluid from spinal cords of patients. Other damages include the neural system and death of patients due to advanced syphilitic lesions. The infection rate went high to wives, while the offspring of participants were born with congenital syphilis. Meanwhile, the government went further to ensure that men in the Tuskegee study did not receive treatment even after a standard cure- penicillin came up in the 1940s. Some patients went blind, insane from advanced illness as the doctors withheld medications. The doctors’ remaining commitment was to observe subjects through predetermined autopsy and make the families agree to the final procedure; the government offered burial insurance at $50 as the cost of casket and grave.
Eunice Rivers’ Conclusion
If I had been Eunice Rivers’ place, I do not think I would have concluded like she did, with regards to the ethical choice available. The reason for this is because, I would not want to see patients harmed through studies while the available nursing standards is to deliver quality care and adhere to patients’ safety. By befriending the study participants, Eunice helped researchers keep subjects in an unethical study while she knew what was happening but helped anyway. The Tuskegee syphilis research exercise was the most intriguing, and Eunice Rivers was instrumental in procuring the members and keeping people involved. As she was in the professional medical world, Eunice was an ideal link between disparate spheres. According to studies, historians have seen her a complex character who betrayed her race while she sought to improve the health of black people. As a nurse, she also betrayed her profession by dooming patients she was charged to care for. From a modern perspective, it can be argued that Eunice was a more victim of her gender than a betrayer because she was powerless to speak up in the man’s world. Also, she was helpless in a world where whites were in control.
Racist Practices of the Tuskegee Study
The Tuskegee exercise was purely racist, and this can be seen from an ethics lens on the primary violation of the principle of fair test subject selection. The number of study participants was 600 men from which about four hundred were infected by syphilis, and 200 were reserved as a control group. All study participants enrolled were black men- a reflection of racist motives by the researchers. One can wonder why Caucasian individuals were not enrolled in the study. Far from this, studies point that a similar exercise was conducted in Oslo in Norway prior to the Tuskegee study. During that time, there were myths in the US that syphilis was prevalent among black people, otherwise referred to as Negros, due to their irresponsible nature. As explained by doctors, black people possessed excessive sexual desires that threatened the foundation of white society. Such comments capture the climate of racism that existed during the 1930s in the US and the rest of the world. As pointed in the studies, racism was featured in American research during that time, as evident in the long-standing of using African-Americans as research tests. When understood that blacks were involved in the studies, the exercises were seen as less evil, which became normative for research in the US. As such, racial posture during the Tuskegee Study was not an accident, but a deliberate choice consistent with the negative view towards black people as inferior racially compared to whites. The Tuskegee study can be seen as a clinical project that went beyond the normal mode of pure racist experiments on humans.
Medical researchers manipulated men to participate in the exercise by enticing them with medical tests, meals on examination day, and free healthcare services for minor sickness. Also, false promises were about compensations and provisions after the death regarding burial stipends paid to beneficiaries. Even when a drug for syphilis came in the 1940s, researchers neglected to give out to the sick black men in the Tuskegee study. In the end, dozens of participants died, while others infected their spouses, sexual partners, and kids. When a panel reviewed the study in 1972 to confirm whether the Tuskegee study was ethically justified, it was determined that study patrols failed to give subjects informed consent that participants were to remain untreated.
Racism has the potential to nullify the essence of biomedical practices. When participants are unfairly recruited, trust between researchers and subjects is lost or between the community in which the exercise takes place. The Tuskegee study is part of American popular lore and stands as an example of how racism allows the perpetuation of studies in the public healthcare setting. Perhaps the case study symbolically a cause of continued distrust of the health care system by the black people who are less likely to participate in preventive care or follow physician advise.
In conclusion, this paper has analytically looked at the case study of Tuskegee and respond to the perpetuation of racism and unethical practices in the health care system. From the case study, the situation may be the factor or observed racial health disparities in the US as the legacy of the experiment extended beyond the borders. Typically, it can be estimated that the Tuskegee disclosure lowered the care routine among old black people. The paper has examined how the historical event contributed to medical mistrust or health-seeking behaviors or outcomes.