Matt Saunders

Artifact #3

2/21/17

Artifact #3 – Ethics and Infectious Diseases

Ethical issues that come with dealing with infectious disease include individual and population and within those titles are vaccines, isolation/quarantine, and public awareness. For example, quarantining can be very specific to an ethnic group like Typhoid Mary. Mary was a woman who was exiled basically just because of her race and ethnic background. Reports of white people being able to leave a quarantined area at that time were spreading but if you were in china town and not white you were forced to stay. This is an ethics issue amongst civilians and can start to cause questioning of the moral background of the medical field. A debate that is still going strong today is should getting a vaccine be an individual’s choice or should they have to for the benefit of the entire population. Some points for the argument are the constitution and others just want the best thing for the world. However, if you look at the evidence it is simply someone’s opinion that if everyone was to get vaccinated that it would fix the spread of the disease.

The issue of informed consent and communication about clinical trials is extremely important and can be taken advantage of, as did happen in the Tuskegee Syphilis study. In the Tuskegee study the government doctors came in treating “bad blood” which stood for more than Syphilis and was not exactly a medical term. This was intentionally misleading because the end result was not to treat the black men with Syphilis but to document the effects of Syphilis. The men were simply misinformed and lied too about what they were doing and what medicines were being prescribed. In many cases instead of getting penicillin they were given Tylenol or aspirin which would have no effect on the debilitating disease of Syphilis. Tuskegee caused distrust between the American people and those in the medical field. If someone today was to try and push one hundred percent of people should be vaccinated with every vaccine that is offered, that will never happen. Here is why, due to the Tuskegee study people no longer take what is said at face value; opinions and recommendations are constantly being questioned and rightfully so. If someone wanted to try and make headway in this issue with vaccines and “fix” the so called issue my advice would be to get the scientist and medical doctors all on the same page. Many highly educated doctors will tell you that certain vaccines are not needed. Therefor before pushing someone’s personal agenda the public needs to see consistency amongst the professionals. In the past the head of the CDC said that the Tuskegee trials were perfectly fine and come to find out they were blatantly lying to them and this will always haunt the relationship between medical professionals and civilians.

The studies have been rationalized by the idea that what is better for the greater good. I think it would be rather interesting to understand the thought process of the CDC head that authorized and encouraged the Tuskegee study. From certain perspectives these studies have been rationalized because of the potential to help mankind in a whole and for the future. Many people today question the rationale behind such decision as it is seen to be unconstitutional and unethical.

The potential consequences of the unethical studies will result in less people to be willing to trust medical professions. This may seem miniscule but, in the event of an outbreak and the medical professionals are correct then it will be hard to control the spread of the outbreak. What will change this you might ask and that would be for the people to experience it firsthand and once they see for themselves that there is an outbreak then they will seek medical attention. I think it is safe to say that in Mobile, AL. that there were not too many black males volunteering for government testing once the Tuskegee case was brought to light.

In conclusion, the Tuskegee study was unethical and because of that case people today are still hesitant to blindly follow medical professionals. In many ways that case alone has questioned the professionalism of the so called medical professionals. You fix this by educating the public and being honest with them. Being transparent is also a good fix to the issue. Ultimately time is what it will take because trust is earned and not given. Once trust has been broken it becomes harder to regain it.

HR: Class notes and PowerPoints along with material from canvas.