FREE ESSAY ON THE TUSKEGEE STUDY

THE TUSKEGEE STUDY

In 1972 a great injustice was discovered by Jean Heller. The great injustice was the
Tuskegee study. I was a study performed in 1932 on 600 African-American men. 399 of the
men were infected with the STD. syphilis and 201 of them were not infected with the
disease. All of these men were uneducated and poor. So when the government offered them
free physical examinations, free rides to and from the clinics, hot meals on examinations
days, free treatments for minor ailments, and a guarantee that a burial stipend would be
paid to their survivors of course they excepted. Even though the men agreed they were not
informed of what was supposed to happen in the study. But what they didn't know was that
they would never receive the proper treatment for their disease. Even when penicillin was
accepted as the treatment of choice for syphilis in 1945 the men were still not given the
treatment. This study went on until 1972 exactly 40 years after it began. In 1947 an
advisory panel found nothing to show that the subjects were ever given the choice of
quitting the study, even when this new, highly effective treatment became widely used.
The Tuskegee Study symbolizes the medical misconduct and blatant disregard for human
rights. And the worst part about the whole thing is that the government let this happen.
The doctors that participated in the study were performing unethical and immoral
experiments on human subjects. Many people compare the Tuskegee Study to the Third Reich
and their in-human experiments performed on the Jewish. There was not a formal protocol
for the study nor could one be provided. By the time the story broke in 1972 over 100 of
the infected men had died, others suffered from serious syphilis related conditions that
may have contributed to their later deaths. In 1973 Fred Gray a prominent civil rights
lawyer, brought a $1.8 billion class action civil suit against many of those institutions
and individual involved in the study. Gray also demanded 3 million in damages for each
living participant and the heirs of the deceased. The case never went to trial. In 1974
the government agreed to a 10 million out of court settlement. The living participants
each received 37,500 in damages, the heirs of the deceased, 15,000. Not until 1997 did
the government apologize for the injustice that happened in the Tuskegee Study. The
apology did not right all of the wrongs but it was a good start.