Syphilis and many other infectious diseases that are venereal or spread through contact of individuals poses a concern for ethical problems. This is because when searching for a treatment or a cure, is it wrong to tell someone who they can or cannot see, is it right for people to be isolated from everyone they know because they are infective? Another couple of questions that infectious diseases like these pose are, is there a bias in the population towards certain groups of ethnicity or color and even are the experiments that are being conducted being conducted in an honorable manner? Each of these questions were important for the study of syphilis and many of the ethical problems were violated by the U.S. government and society. The ethical issues faced were not only those similar to the plague. Many of the same issues were faced with how to treat these people and how to deal with them properly, but as stated previously because of the time period and the thoughts of society syphilis was looked at completely differently. For example in the Tuskegee study government scientist were able to conduct experiments on people who gave a form of improper consent and were almost lied to. The test subjects were patients that already had a form of syphilis and were told that they had “bad blood”. This is how the government told the patients they were treating them too, they were told they were being treated for “bad blood”, when in reality they were just being recorded for the long term and short term effects of syphilis
Another thing that in my opinion made this study unethical is that when and if the subjects tried to seek help from an outside source they were stopped and prevented from having actual treatment because they were a part of the study. This study was no different than what was convicted of in the Nuremburg cases by Nazi scientist, although the scientist in this study rationalized it saying that it was for the betterment of society and they were receiving valuable knowledge. All of the rationalization was bull shit and everyone involved knew it. The fact that they left each and every one of these African American syphilis infected patients to rot because of research was messed up and in my mind the furthest thing from being ethical. [2]
This study done by the U.S. Public Health Service in Macon country, Alabama led to the mistrust and misrepresentation of the medical field by many African Americans. When studies that are unethical and target specific groups like in this case the rural, poor African Americans in Alabama, the trust and the backing of the system is lost. An example of this mistrust leading to turmoil was in Marion, Alabama where a Tuberculosis outbreak occurred and had 100% higher incidence rate.[3]This type of example is common and happened again in the united states when measles spread because of the mistrust of vaccinations.[4]Medicine, although extremely helpful to society can cause mistrust and turmoil when implemented improperly. In my opinion ethical decisions are hard, but in the case of syphilis and infectious diseases ethics are sometimes pushed to the wayside in order to save the rest of society, whether that be good or bad it is totally opinion based.
[1]https://www.pinterest.com/pin/500532946059866707/
[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNa8CnC4sSU
[3]http://nyti.ms/1ROl2i9
[4]https://www.ft.com/content/ab21b854-3056-11e9-ba00-0251022932c8