UNETHICAL RESEARCH ETHICS
The Untreated Syphilis Study, in the African American Male at Tuskegee, Alabama, in the US, was contacted with many unethical practices. It involved the United Public Health Service carrying an experiment on the natural course of untreated latent syphilis in 400 African American men. The medical study involving a non-therapeutic experiment took place without the men’s information. Consequently, the study was amoral and unfairly done to the men.
To begin with, the recruitment of the men was by the use of misleading promises. There was a lack of informed consent to the research participants. The doctors didn’t disclose the research aspects to the participants for them to decide whether to participate in the research. Moreover, the researchers deceived the participants that the study offered treatment for “bad blood,” and they never disclosed to the subjects that they had syphilis. Furthermore, the researchers withheld treatment for the subjects for research purposes.
Consequently, when penicillin became the recommended drug for the treatment of syphilis in 1947, the researchers neither disclosed nor administered it to the people. These professionals also made efforts to combat the treatment of the subjects from elsewhere. The situation was unethical as the researchers continued administering spinal taps without anesthesia to the participants, which was not the actual syphilis treatment in their knowledge.
Also, the study was unscrupulous as the risk it posed on the subjects was corrupt. In the long run, due to withdrawal of the actual treatment and lack of adequate care, eventually, the men suffered death, blindness, insanity, or developed other severe health problems. The exercise was disreputable as the researchers never minded on the health of the subjects. Besides, withholding the subjects from deciding to quit the study was unethical. Although the men’s health was continually at risk, the researchers continued administering non-effective medicines, transportation, and meals on their examination day. There was no point at which the subjects had free will to choose whether to continue or seek medical attention elsewhere.