Interesting article re: The Tuskegee Syphilis experiments : "Bad Blood in Tuskegee"

[Kingshakabobo]

From: Damn Interesting

(don't read the 3rd comment if you don't want YOUR blood to go bad/boil)

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=843

Early in the twentieth century, the medical community was practically helpless in its battle against syphilis. The crippling affliction was spreading at an alarming rate in certain areas, particularly among the poorer segments of the world population. Even for those who could afford medical care, the only known treatments rivaled the disease itself in the harm they did to sufferers.

In 1932, Dr. Taliaferro Clark from the United States Public Health Service (PHS) launched a study in Macon County, Alabama in order to document the progression of this troublesome sexually-transmitted disease. The region was home to hundreds of poor and mostly illiterate black farmers, and cases of syphilis had reached alarming proportions. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was undertaken in the hopes that a deeper understanding of syphilis would provide new insights on potential treatments, and possibly justify a government-funded treatment program. But from these noble beginnings, a lack of funds and a shortage of ethics led to one of the most shameful clinical mishaps in US history.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> More @ link

[Warpy]

1. The real shame of this study is that the autopsies

were so unnecessary, as were the longitudinal studies. They already knew from hundreds of years of observation how the disease progressed. Autopsies of patients who had died from it had already been done.

Human beings were not only condemned to a horrible, painful death, they were allowed to go about their business and infect wives, girlfriends, and any children born to these unions after a cure had come out.

Allowing the disease to progress before penicillin came on the scene instead of treating the subjects with mercury or arsenic, treatments that didn't make them non contagious and were at least as damaging as the disease, did no harm. Once penicillin came on the scene and was withheld, the study became a massive violation of medical ethics.

Every researcher who insisted on continuing that study by condemning human beings to an unnecessary and horrible death should have been in prison for crimes against humanity.

[Kingshakabobo]

2. "crimes against humanity" - agreed! n/t

[aikoaiko]

3. A cautionary tale for all scientists with good intentions.