Cholera

Bad Blood

It is arguable that the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment in Macon County Alabama was one of the darkest patches in the American Public Health Service (PHS). In theory the PHS’s primary purpose is to care for the sick and to improve their health. The American PHS did the complete opposite in the case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. They didn’t treat the patients sufficiently for them to heal, they were not completely honest with the patients as to what the experiment was about and the name of the experiment was Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Man; self explanatory. I believe that the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment violated the subject’s moral rights, betrayed the people of Macon County and has lost the trust of the people in respect to serving as a force of good.

The black people of Macon County, Alabama in 1932 were for the most part illiterate and blind where medicine was concern. These people where eager for medical attention as some of them have never been examine by a doctor before their encounter with the American PHS physicians. The government physicians knew this and as a result exploited the opportunity to make these at best “second class citizens” a scientific experiment. Due to there illiteracy they were repeatedly lied to. There were told that they were getting a blood test and not told the truth that they were being experimented on: “Most had never had a blood test and had no idea what one was. They cooperated, she [Nurse Rivers] explained, because it was something new and some medical attention that they had never had” (Jones 114). Dr. Wenger, the Regional Head of Venereal Disease was a believer that black and white people were different and that the disease operated differently in blacks and whites: “I am glad to see in print for the first time by a clinician of Dr. Moore’s experience and reputation the statement ‘Syphilis in the negro is in many respects almost a different disease from syphilis in the white.’ Dr Wenger added pointedly,...