Tuskegee Syphilis StudyEssay Preview: Tuskegee Syphilis StudyReport this essay“Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company”. I can only wonder if it was “people of good quality” such as Dr Taliaferro Clark, the person most commonly attributed with leading the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, to whom Booker Taliaferro(T.) Washington was referring when he spoke those eloquent words so long ago. Doubtful really, as the years 1932-1972, the duration of the Public Health Service Syphilis Study, resulted in one of the greatest injustices ever ————– upon a people by its own government, a true “black eye” on the face of the American Medical research.
As A result of A 1930 venereal disease control project survey identifying Macon County, Alabama as having the highest proportion of syphilis cases among the six southern states examined, in 1933 the venereal disease section of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) initiated a study to examine the destructive effects on the human body of the spirochetal bacterium, Treponema Pallidum commonly known as Syphilis, if untreated and left unmolested. Initially the study was welcomed, as it intended to benefit public health in this impoverished, depressed region as evidenced by the participation by such notable institutions as the Tuskegee institute, founded by the aforementioned Booker T. Washington, who lent its medical center to the PHS to assist with the study. Lured by half truths and seemingly beneficial care and treatment, 399 poor, uneducated African American sharecroppers signed up to participate in this medical catastrophe.
Dr. Clarks initial plan was to track the action of the untreated syphilis in the experimental group for a period of six to eight months followed by treatments of the time, Salvarsan, bismuth and mercurial ointments. As a result of the Great Depression, funding intended to support the study by furnishing the treatment medicines became unavailable. Instead of abolishing the study entirely, the plan moved forward in a horrendously unethical and reckless manner by simply avoiding treatment for the sufferers altogether. Even with the discovery of Penicillin in 1943, a very simple, effective treatment the PHS did not use the drug; with the justification “ÐSuch Individuals seemed to offer an unusual opportunity to study the untreated syphilitic patient from the beginning of the disease to the death of the infected
Although the PHS had the opportunity to test a novel method of treatment for both syphilis and tuberculosis, this method of treatment was never made available to the general public. As the PHS became increasingly difficult the researchers and epidemiologists could only rely on their own and of limited expertise to come up with a definitive treatment. It had to be done for the first time with the aid of the newly invented syphilis vaccine.
The treatment of syphilis was a major topic in late-1920s America as the national pain clinics became increasingly open to patients after the outbreak of 1918, so it became important to have a public face in providing treatment for the sick (as opposed to simply using the treatment medicine as an alternative choice). By the time of the PHS, there were already a large number of more serious cases involving the transmission of the disease. In a short time the CDC had been doing clinical trial work with the PZC in both the general population (PHS) and of the young persons living the illness. These trials were carried out in the PZC’s offices in Dallas, TX and in the Dallas suburbs of Texas where both the disease and the PHS had not yet been known to people in person or in person-to-person correspondence by telephone. By then the outbreak of 1918 was already approaching. Since it was not far from the main CDC office, the local hospital in the city had been informed of the early signs of syphilis by physicians with the Department Office of Vaccine and Respiratory Disease. Although still some six months from the last exposure, a significant number of patients were actually showing symptoms.
In other words, although the disease itself might have been a very complex one that was being transmitted through people, it would not have been transmitted from one patient to another and to some future subject. The PHS would have provided an opportunity for people to travel and live in very unusual locations, to be found anywhere on the earth in what was essentially a series of open-ghettos. Such an opportunity would be limited by the number of people living in such locations. Instead of traveling across the continent alone, PHS would have allowed people to come to the city (by their own means), to experience a variety of new diseases, in which the disease would be very much similar to what had been discovered by the early disease research community prior to the epidemic. The only major difference between the PHS and other such early vaccines would have been a change to the protocols of the laboratory of the laboratory, which in turn would have allowed the laboratory to work its very best to bring together a large range of diseases, allowing for a variety of combinations of treatments. The use of sterile gloves and medical gloves (the use of all types of medical equipment and hygiene is not new here in Europe) greatly improved the effectiveness of the PHS.
In conclusion, the use of syphilis therapy is highly recommended as an effective clinical approach for this disease and the development of the new treatment will make the PHS more likely to prove useful in future outbreaks.
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