What Is The Significance Of The Tuskegee Study

During a time when African Americans had an inferior and “irrelevant” role in society, they were utilized by scientists for the success of a deadly study. From 1932 to 1972, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study used African American men in order to observe and understand all aspects of the venereal disease, syphilis, which an immense number of African Americans possessed. Though the Tuskegee Syphilis Study may have sounded trustworthy and beneficial to those with the disease, one must not be deceived, for the foundation of the study was built on a pile of lies. The scientists of the experiment intentionally took advantage of the helpless African Americans in order to research more about syphilis as opposed to actually curing the syphilitic victims.
The cause of an act leads to the birth of a result. In regards to the purpose and cause of Tuskegee study the goal was not only to “determine the prevalence of syphilis among blacks and explore the possibilities for mass treatment” (Brandt 22), but to also to emphasize how “Syphilis in the negro is in many respects almost a different disease from Syphilis in the white”(Brandt 6). Scientists came to an agreement that a difference between whites and blacks was that “The negro possessed an excessive sexual desire which threatened the very foundations of white society. Negro springs from a southern race, and as such his sexual appetite is strong” (Brandt 2). This immense promiscuous interaction of African Americans is what was causing the disease. In order for there to have been an experiment, African Americans with syphilis were needed. “The USPHS found Macon County, Alabama, in which the town of Tuskegee is located, to have the highest syphilis rate of the six counties surveyed. The Rosenwald Study concluded that mass treatment could be successfully implemented among rural blacks” (Brandt 4). Scientists only desired to investigate and experiment, not to cure the patients. Once the study was conducted, “the subjects
For instance, because the experimental subjects were never given treatment, “scores of people died painful deaths, and others became permanently blind or insane, and the children of several were born with congenital Syphilis” (Brandt 1). Many researchers explained opinions contradictory to the conducting scientists’ opinions of the study regarding human ethics, such as Dr. J. E. Moore who wrote, “treatment markedly diminishes the risk from Syphilis” (Brandt 5). Since the patients were kept untreated by the USPHS, “as the Oslo Study had shown, untreated Syphilis led to to cardiovascular disease, insanity, and premature death”(Brandt 5). Though the results of experimentation may be reliable, the unjust, unrighteous, and inconsiderate acts performed by the conductors of the Tuskegee Study and the many researchers’ opinions regarding human ethics that contradicted the acts of the Tuskegee study caused it to have a disrespected reputation for the long