The Nuremberg Code: The Tuskegee Experiment

The Nuremberg code refers to a set of guiding research ethic principles specific to human experimentation. This code arose from the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II which involved 23 German physicians and adminstrators who were arraigned for their participation in crimes against humanity. These people had allegedly carried out medical experiments leading to debilitating and fatal results in the war concentration camps on numerous people without voluntary consent. For this reason, the origin of the Nuremberg code can be attributed to the Nazi atrocities carried out in the second World War because it raised awareness about the non-existence of international standards for conducting research with human participants. Ultimately, the
In 1932, the United States Public Health Service conducted a study of Syphilis in African Americans to investigate the progression of the disease in the absence of antibiotic treatment which led to a number of participants dying due to comlications arising from the disease or the disease itself. The Tuskegee study was named after an African American college in Alabama and African Americans were recruited through the duration of the study which lasted for forty years. The main controversy about this study stemmed from the fact that despite the availability of treatments for the disease while the study was being carried out, the researchers chose to deny participants the treatments in order to achieve their desired results. The nature of this research eventually became public in the 1960s leading to public outcry against the unjust treatment of participants as well as a loss of trust in the medical community by African Americans who felt all other related programs were being unjustly manipulated by the researchers. Therefore, the Belmont report which was a response to the public outcry regarding the Tuskegee study outlined three basic ethical principles which was designed to be the basis for all future research conducted on human
Also, the risks and benefits of the study have to be carefully reviewed by the researcher, a review committee as well as the human participants to ensure justice in the research. Finally, in terms of subject selection, participants should not be selected in order to favor one group or put another at a disadvantage. Therefore the research has to be reviewed to eliminate selection bias by the researchers in order for the research to be carried out in a justifiable manner. This responsibility also falls on the Institutional review boards to ensure that unjust social patterns do not occur within the groups being