Lec. 4 Ethics and Research

Question 1

Tuskegee Experiment

Answer 1

TUSKEGEE EXPERIMENT – On May 16, 1997, President Clinton apologized to the survivors and families of hundreds of men used in a research project to study the progression of untreated syphilis.

• They were poor, African American, and had few resources available to them.
• In 1932, when they were offered free medical care by physicians and researchers involved with the United States Public Health Service, they believed they had found treatment for what they had been told was “bad blood.”
• Instead, they were enrolled in an observational research study, without their knowledge or consent. In exchange for their participation (which included agreeing to an autopsy at death), the men received free medical examinations (primarily to provide data for the study), transportation and hot meals on the days of their examinations, and $50 for burial expenses.
• Even though some rudimentary remedies for syphilis were available in the early years of the study, they were not offered to these men, so that the study of the natural history of the untreated disease would not be jeopardized.
• The study did not end until 1972, forty years after it had begun, and twenty years after penicillin had been identified as an effective treatment for syphilis.
• It has come to symbolize racism in medicine, ethical misconduct in human research, paternalism by physicians, and government abuse of vulnerable people.”

Question 2

Milgrim Experiment

Answer 2

MILGRAM EXPERIMENT – The Milgram (1963) experiment on OBEDIENCE was conducted on the Yale University campus on obedience.

• The participants were told that the study had to do with memory and that one participant would be the learner and the other would be the teacher. The teacher would be responsible for shocking the learner every time that learner got a wrong answer and that each time the learner was shocked, the voltage of that shock would have to increase with the highest level of shock being clearly labeled as dangerous on the fake -but very professional looking shocking machine.
• The FINDINGS were SHOCKING! Although a low amount of people were predicted to obey the experimenter in giving the more painful shocks, most participants did, and over half of them administered shocks all the way up to the highest one.