Many ethical issues pop up when dealing with infectious diseases.  The Tuskegee Syphilis Study brought up many of these ethical issues. The patients were enrolled in the study without their informed consent.  This was a huge issue because the patients didn’t know the risks of what was being done to them.  they may have felt pressured to say yes to the experiment or they just didn’t have enough education as the people came from a deprived socioecological environment.  In the town they picked doctors were seen as authoritative figures and well respected.  The people listened and did as the doctors saw best. They were denied from the actual treatment of the disease. This means they overlooked the welfare of the people, they didn’t care if they lived or died they just wanted their research done and to get results.  The patients were never given the option to take the treatment once it was discovered, they were prevented from it.  Another issue was the state ignored the fact that the patient’s wives probably had syphilis too and let them go untreated.  As well as they never kept accurate records of who died from syphilis and who lived.  They left the entire community in jeopardy by not treating the disease.  The morality of this experiment was never questioned even though it was published for 40 years.  No one stood up to say it was wrong or no one thought it was wrong because doctors were saying it was alright.  This Tuskegee Study was unethical, yet the doctors rationalized what they were doing.  The doctors rationalized that they were discovering what the disease naturally does when it goes without treatment.  The study also only came to an end when brought to light as the public disagreed with the morals of the study and the patients never filed a case against the study yet they were compensated to some degree.  The doctors also believed that it was good they found negative results as in the disease didn’t differ between whites and blacks.  The none results helped them to rationalize that it was a good experiment.

The potential consequences of unethical studies performed on a specific group ie African Americans in this case has affected their willingness to participate in medical studies and on trusting of medical professions.  People are still willing to participate in medical studies as they believe it will help the common good. However, the people now do not have a health seeking culture unless they are very ill.  They also do not want the doctors to be in their business as afraid they may be reported to law enforcement for some illegal activities.  The people distrust the government medicine as they allowed for an unethical experiment to last 40 years with many of the patients dying. This mistrust has led to people not going to doctors which is causing earlier mortality.  The consequences of this mistrust and unethical and rationalization of the Tuskegee Study has caused major impact on the way people now view medical professions.  People now question if the doctors are doing what’s best for them.  The ethics of infectious diseases has drastically changed due to this case study.

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