You are on page 1of 3

! ! !

Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Allison Kao, Anav Sood, Narayan Sundararajan Senior Division Group Website

In exploring topics for this years NHD theme, Rights and Responsibilities, we agreed that we wanted to learn more about a time in history that interested each of us and displayed injustices that pertain to the theme. As first-generation Americans, we were fascinated with racism in minority history, examining subjects such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and Immigration Act of 1924. However, we continued to search for more topics in pursuit of one that we would enjoy researching. Our common passion for science and ethics led us to settle upon the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. To develop an overall understanding of the study, we began by finding books and online databases beneficial to our research. From there, we contacted several archives for collections of primary resources. We went to the Cleveland Public Library to obtain both copies of newspaper articles from the time period and government documents relevant to Tuskegee. A librarian at the Library of Congress showed us a comprehensive online collection of photographs and papers. We also discovered primary materials from the Minority Health & Health Equity Archive at the University of Pittsburgh, Clinton Library, and Tuskegee University Library. After conducting research, we contacted possible interviewees for our project. We were fortunate to obtain a phone interview with Jean Heller, the Associated Press writer who exposed the study, as well as email interviews with Carol Yoon, the New York Times journalist who wrote an article on the surviving Tuskegee patients and their families, and Dr. Stuart Younger, chairman of the bioethics department at Case Western Reserve University. We decided early on in our research to create a website. As the Tuskegee study ended recently, we knew that there were several multimedia materials that only a website could display. With technology, we could utilize interactive elements to enhance a

readers understanding of our project. We were eager to take on the challenge of a website, which integrating components from the paper, documentary, and exhibit categories. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is entirely intertwined with rights and responsibilities, this years NHD theme. The experiment was initiated as a part of the countrywide obligation to find a cure for venereal diseases in the early 1900s. Moreover, the experiment was a fundamental violation of the right to informed consent, as patients were told that they had bad blood not syphilis. During the study, its participants were deceived into taking ineffective syphilis treatments and withheld from the information that autopsies would be performed on them. Once penicillin became a viable remedy for syphilis, the Public Health Service still went to great lengths to ensure that patients were denied medicine. Despite these abuses, doctors continued the study for forty years, justifying their actions with the responsibility to achieve a discovery in an experiment that was never done before. Ultimately the studys impact on ethics in the medical field shows the nations duty to protect its citizens from encroachment on their rights to informed consent.

You might also like