Tuskegee Experiment
Abuses of Human Rights in the name of medical research have played their part in developing our current codes of conduct for clinical research.
For 40 years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted an experiment on 400 black men who had contracted syphilis. These men, illiterate sharecroppers from Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from, or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for 'bad blood', their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis.
This is an example of unethical research. Why do you think such an experiment was conducted? Click here to find out
The data for the experiment was collected from autopsies of the men, and was supposed to provide information on the development of the disease in the untreated state, comparing outcomes in black and white men. The scientific content of the experiment was all but worthless, yet the experiment continued until a whistle-blower leaked the story to the Washington Star on 25 July 1972.
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