40 Years of Unethical Human Experimentation in the United States — The Tuskegee Study
Remembering the clinical trial that transformed US ethical laws for protecting vulnerable humans. Or did it?
Two of the most crucial turning points in the development of global ideas on the ethics of human experimenting were the Nazi human experimentations and the Tuskegee study. These happened in different parts of the world. However, their context remains the same, that is: dismissive attitudes towards the fundamental worth of research subjects as humans and exploiting individuals from the weaker sections and lower socioeconomic statuses in society by running grossly unethical experiments on them.
Officially known as “the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” the Tuskegee study was initiated in 1932 in the Tuskegee Institute and sponsored by the US Public Health Services. As part of the study, 600 African American men — 399 men with Syphilis and 201 men without Syphilis were recruited. The administrators of this study used vague jargon to educate participants about this trial. For example, some were told that they were getting treated for “bad blood,” which could mean any ailment. Also, some of the participants were not informed that they had Syphilis. The participants were…
