Conflict Between Researh and Ethics on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages The Declaration of Helsinki by the WHO clearly states that in clinical trials involving humans the wellbeing of the subject should be of prime importance than the interest of science or society. This has been stated because at times in order to achieve the objectives of a study the investigators might overlook the welfare of the trial subjects thus jeopardizing their health in the process. According to ethical rules while comparing two treatment options the control group of the study must receive the best-known treatment available while the study subjects are given a potential newer treatment. Only when there is no effective treatment available a placebo-controlled group can be used for the study. There have been several trials that have followed unethical means to realize study objective and have become textbook examples of unethical research study, one such study being the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis (Angell, 1997).

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis is widely considered as one of the most horrific studies in which the basic ethics of conduct has been totally disregarded. The study was based on the hypothesis that black and white people differed in their response to the disease. Before the study was initiated in 1928, the U.S Public Health Services (PHS) had already completed a study in Mississippi in which 25% of the participants who were all black had tested positive for the disease. The PHS intended to expand and continue the study in the rural black population and set up a treatment program with aid from the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Though the study initially intended to improve the health of the African American population by providing doses of metals that were used to treat the disease during that period, the coming of the great depression drastically lowered the funds for the project. And it was then that the PHS decided to conduct a study based on the aforementioned hypothesis that racial variation plays a role in the effects of syphilis. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More