Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphillis Experiments
Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis ExperimentsJames H. Jones is the author of "Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment." The book was copyrighted in 1981. For two years, in 1974 and 1975, Jones worked closely with Fred Gray, the civil rights attorney who brought the class action suit on behalf of the men in the Tuskegee study. He also served a short internship as senior research scholar at the center for Bioethics of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. Jones had full access to the Tuskegee Study records via the Freedom of Information Act in 1975. Jones is now a professor at Arkansas University. This book discusses the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments that occurred in Macon County, Alabama. The experiments started in 1932 and lasted for over 40 years. They were a result of a sudden emergence in the need for health care for black men. In the years leading to the 20th century many physicians believed syphilis would surely terminate the black race. However, they cared little about this until they realized if action were not taken the disease would spread quickly through the white race, as well. Throughout the 1920's the Public Health Service (PHS) attempted to ease the pain of the blacks in the South. Six diff
The black males interpreted this to mean that they genuinely did have bad blood in their veins and that the doctors would treat them as necessary. Finally, in 1972 after falling under great criticism, the PHS abruptly halted the studies, thus ending the cruelest experiments recorded in American history. Are the sacrifices of a few needed for the salvation of many? If a cure for syphilis was found due to these experiments, and had it saved millions of lives, would the torture those few hundred men endured be worth it? This is a question only society can answer as a whole. I had heard many times the mentioning of the Tuskegee Experiments but never heard the whole story. The men were also denied treatments for other types of diseases or sicknesses, with the exception of aspirin. After the first year was over the PHS and its corresponding departments (the Macon County Health Department and The Alabama State Board of Heath which consisted of whites, and the Tuskegee Institute which consisted of blacks) decided to continue the research over an extended period of time. Although the Doctors claimed these were experiments, they were nothing more than observations and studies. Tragically the results showed no progress in the area of syphilis. Never before had the Americans seen such horrific experiments on humans on their own soil. Even after the program fell under scrutiny in the 1960's, no immediate action was taken to rectify the problems. The subjects of the Tuskegee Experiments were ignorant, for the most part. By the time the experiments were finally stopped, many of the black men were dead, and the ones that were still alive, were far past the stage of successful treatment. Still worse, the physicians never once considered treatment for the families of the men, who were part of these experiments, as they cared nothing for the troubles of the black people.
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