Prior to this class, the only thing I knew about Tuskegee was the role of their airmen in WW2. After the documentary on the syphilis experiment that took place there, however, I was not only applaud that such actions occurred, but that I had never heard of the horrific incident before.
The Tuskegee study sheds light on the ethical issues that arise in the treatment of diseases. In this case, issues arose between the desire to understand the disease and the extent of its infection, and the actual treatment of inflicted patients. It was clearly unethical to allow this population to continue to live with the disease even though they thought they were being treated. Attempts to rationalize it, however, come from viewing that the lose of lives in this study are minuscule compared to the number of people that would be saved from the disease after scientists had a better understanding of how it evolves long term. There were several other issues with the study in that the patients were not aware they were subjects of an extensive research experiment, one that targeted and was bias towards a particular racial group. Unaware that they were still carrying the disease, they were not properly quarantined and poses a serious threat to the rest of the population they could have also infected.
The bias in this experiment had a significant impact on regional and racial aspects of disease treatment. Since the poverty rate was lower in this county than in other counties, and the participants were all African American, both of these became stigmatized as qualifications for contracting the disease. These continue today, but it has altered slightly to be perceived as primarily drug users. The CDC reports that the most concerning population for those who contract and spread disease are frequent drug users. Although syphilis was not originally spread sexual, it is now commonly spread as an STD and through shared needles. For this reason, the disease plagues lower income areas that have considerable drug issues. The betrayal of doctors in this test lead to a distrust of medical professionals, particularly from this population. Perhaps not exclusively from this social group, such distrust does still occur and threatens the overall health of the population when things such as herd immunity are not practiced or in place.