Unit 3: Systematic Racism Flashcards
Human Subjects
The Nazi medical abuses and revelations during the Nuremberg Trials resulted in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki, strengthening the notion of informed consent.
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932 – 1972)
- Compare to a retrospective study of while males in Oslo Norway
- United States Public Health Service
- A prospective Observe the natural history of syphilis in African American men
Syphilis can lead to:
- Blindness
- Deafness
- Mental Illness
- Heart Disease
- Bone Deterioration
- Collapse of CNS
- Death
Tuskegee Institute
- Local Doctors recruited to assess the men
- Research was conducted by officials of the United States Public Health Service at the Tuskegee Institute, then an all black college. (now Tuskegee University)
The Subjects
- 600 Sharecroppers from Macon County Alabama -399 had latent syphilis
- 201 were free of the disease
- Told the study would be for 6 months
- It lasted 40 years
The Men Were Told They Would Receive
- Free medical care for bad blood
- Special free treatments (spinal taps)
- Free burial plots
Initially
- Taliaferro Clark’s study was to be for 6 months with a follow up treatment program
- The Rosewald funds were withdrawn and treatment was deemed too expensive.
- Clark decided to continue with the study, to compare the responses of African Americans to the white males from the retrospective study in Norway
At the end of WW II
- Penicillin was suspected of curing syphilis.
- Another study was undertaken by the US government in Guatemala
- Does taking penicillin prior to exposure prevent syphilis?
- 700 subjects; soldiers, prisoners and mental patients given syphilis without their knowledge
- Some received penicillin, some did not. The study was never published
No informed Consent
By 1947, penicillin had become standard therapy for syphilis. The U.S. government sponsored several public health programs to form “rapid treatment centers” to eradicate the disease. When campaigns to eradicate venereal disease came to Macon County, study researchers prevented their subjects from participating. “So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment.”
They Were Not Told
- They had syphilis, despite the fact they would infect their wives
- That by 1947 there was a cure, penicillin
- That the treatments they were receiving were placebos
- The spinal taps were non therapeutic, rather, they were diagnostic for the study
By the end of the study in 1972
Out of the original 399 with syphilis:
- 28 had died of syphilis
- 100 had died of complications
- 40 wives had been infected
- 19 children had been born with congenital syphilis
Whistle Blowers
- As early as 1955, William Carter Jenkins, an African American statistian working in the Public Health Department called for an end to the study.
- In 1966 Peter Buxtun protested “So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment.“
- The CDC responded that the experiment needed to be continued to it’s end (the death of the last participant)
- Buxton went to the Washington Post and the story broke in the early 1970’2
- Public Outcry led to its termination in 1972
1974: National Research Act
- United States Department of Health and Human Services
- Office of Human Research Protections
- Institutional Review Boards
Measles in the Congo
- In sub-Saharan Africa measles is a dangerous disease
- Health workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo recently went up river to remote villages to inoculate the children
- Many parents refused.
- They believed the vaccination was not for the measles but instead a secret experiment to test a COVID vaccine.
Why Would People Be So Untrusting?
The unfortunate legacy of Human Rights abuses in research
