When bioethicists want to justify their own existence, they routinely point to the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study.  It’s a gripping story. 

Bioethics: Tuskegee vs. COVID

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2022-07-06 08:00:07

When bioethicists want to justify their own existence, they routinely point to the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study.  It’s a gripping story.  Back in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service started a study of 399 black men with latent syphilis, plus a control group of 201 black men without syphilis.  Contrary to what I’ve sometimes heard, the researchers never injected anyone with syphilis.  However, they grossly violated the principle of informed consent, with disastrous consequences:

As an incentive for participation in the study, the men were promised free medical care, but were deceived by the PHS, who never informed subjects of their diagnosis and disguised placebos, ineffective methods, and diagnostic procedures as treatment.

The men were initially told that the “study” was only going to last six months, but it was extended to 40 years. After funding for treatment was lost, the study was continued without informing the men that they would never be treated. None of the infected men were treated with penicillin despite the fact that by 1947, the antibiotic was widely available and had become the standard treatment for syphilis.

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