Infectious disease is a equalizer for all men and women. No gender, race, ethnicity, religious views, or class will keep you safe from pathogens. Because of this obvious fact, doctors have become obsessive to try to find the causes of disease, their symptoms, treatments, and even cures by any means necessary at times. This brings forth the ethical dilemma health care providers face; and what point is the research being conducted inhuman to the test subjects.
There are two instances of medical practice during the 20th century when the United States Health organizations got caught crossing the ethical boundaries of many innocent people. The Tuskegee study and the Guatemala Syphilis study both involved the deliberate mistreatment of patients for the use of medical research.
The Tuskegee study was conducted in a very poor area of the southern United States in 1932. The U.S. Public Health Service wanted to learn the effects of syphilis, particularly its effects on African Americans as opposed to Whites. The medical teams recruited 400 poor, black sharecroppers to participate in the study. Many of these individuals were too poor to afford their own medical expenses so this seemed like a good opportunity for them to get help for free. They were told they were going to cure their “bad blood” which meant a lot of different things to these sharecroppers. The doctors had no intention of curing these patients, just studying the deadly course of the disease. They left patients with disease untreated and intentionally infected those who were not. Many of the experimental practices being performed on live patients such as extracting spinal fluid was a displayed as a treatment to help the patient but it was for studies. Experimental toxic compounds were exposed to these innocent people. The study ended in 1972 after a press brake and after a 40 years of study the results game back negative. Nothing was achieved at the expense of so many lives. Twenty-eight deaths were reported and the survivors lived a life of misery. Many rights of these people were violated, they were lied to, misinformed, and experimented on without consent. These are all similar events that played out in the Guatemala Syphilis study. According to the article, a low ranking Guatemalan soldier was ordered to infirmary by U.S. Doctors where they gave him shots containing syphilis then sent him on leave to spend money on prostitutes knowing that he would transmit the disease sexually. This was not the only case, over 5,000 victims were given the same or similar treatments. No patient should ever be lied to or taken advantage of.
Due to these horrific studies many in the African American community don’t trust white doctors let alone be willing to participate in experiments. These effects of mistreatment are being felt from the communities in South America as well. These health organizations have created a environment of mistrust because they abused trust when they had it. This is something that the medical community dare not do again as the repercussions have been felt long after the passing of the previous generation.