DAWSON COLLEGE

RESEARCH METHODS      

“WHAT ARE OUR ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES AS RESEARCHERS?”

Your Task: For this participation activity you are to read “Racism and Research: The Case

Study of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study” by Allan M. Brandt (1978; available in Léa) and respond

to the questions and reflections below. Practice the rules for APA in-text citation while

completing your responses. The rules can be found here (on page 3):

https://www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/public/services/stsv/academic_skills_centre/APA_Handouts/

APA_Style_Booklet.pdf

WARNING: This reading concerns disturbing details of the racism and inhumanity faced by a

group of black men in the U.S. South during the 1930s to the 1970s. If you are not up for this

reading, please reach out to me immediately. I will provide an alternative activity for you to

work on.

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To begin: Learn a bit about syphilis through the Public Health Agency of Canada’s official

website: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/syphilis.html

Answer the questions below:

- what is syphilis?

Syphilis is a bacterial infection. It is sexually transmitted though oral, genital, or anal sex, and

can also be passed down from an infected mother to her child during pregnancy (Canada Public

Health Services, 2021).

-what are the health effects of syphilis?

person infected may develop ulcers, rashes, sores on the mouth and body. They may suffer from

fever, swollen glands, and hair loss (Canada Public Health Services, 2021).

-how to you minimize your risk for contracting syphilis?

By practicing safe and informed sex and making sure your partners are too you are greatly

reducing your chances of contracting syphilis (Canada Public Health Services, 2021).

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Reading Questions

1. Provide a few basic details about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. For example: when was it

initiated? by whom? what was the purpose of the study? who were the participants?

The study was initiated in the early 1930’s (1932) by the U.S public health service

(USPHS), with the involvement of a Doctor Taliaferro Clark, chief of the venereal

disease division of the organization and of several other doctors like Surgeon General

H.S Cumming. The study was initiated with the alleged goal of observing the health

consequences of syphilis on infected and untreated populations. These doctors got 400

infected men as the research group and 200 uninfected men as the control group from a

population of black men in the county of Macon, in Alabama (Brandt, 1978).

discount when explaining patterns of health and disease among black community

members?

Doctors of the time discounted socioeconomic explanations concerning the condition of

the patterns of health and disease of the black populations in America preferring to hide

behind claims of the uselessness of providing medical treatment to these populations due

to alleged issues of evolution (Brandt, 1978).

3. What did the Rosenwald Study conclude about mass treatment of syphilis in the rural

South? Were these findings taken into consideration in the Tuskegee Study?

The Rosenwald Study concluded that mass treatment could be implemented in the rural

South and in black communities. One of the authors of this study is also the driving force

behind the Tuskegee Study, Dr. Clark, and yet, the Tuskegee Study does not implement

mass treatment for black communities in the south, but rather withholds treatment options

from them (Brandt, 1978).

4. Several difficulties arose in enlisting research subjects for the Tuskegee Study. How did

Dr. Raymond Vonderlehr eventually recruit “willing subjects”?

The populations that they wanted to test for syphilis originally and have participate in the

study were black men older than 25. They ran into the issue of wariness for enlistment. If

they only requested men above that age, the men would be worried that the check-up

would be to verify that these men could go to the army and so, no one would come. They
 also were faced with the problem that these patients would not want to participate if they

were not offered some kind of treatment. Dr. Vonderlehr opened the original testing to

wider ranges so that the populations would not be as wary and offered inefficient

treatment to these men, while telling them that it was efficient, to guarantee their

cooperation (Brandt, 1978).

5. What other tactics were used to ensure participation in the study, including after death

(e.g., for autopsy)?

They realized that if they wanted to autopsy these men, the men must not realize that this

would happen and so, the doctors hid this information from the patients. They also

promised to give the sick and their families 50$ for funeral funds to guarantee the

continued cooperation of these men (Brandt, 1978).

6. What are some of the measures that were taken to ensure that study subjects were not

treated for syphilis?

To make sure that the patients did not receive care for their syphilis, the doctors involved

in the study requested the cooperation of the Alabama Health Department in the

withholding of treatment, and asked local doctors to refer the patients who went seeking

for help back to the care of the practitioners involved in the study. When the Army

drafted some of the subjects, the USPHS requested cooperation from them as well to

make sure that certain drafted men, those being studied, did not receive treatment either.

The doctors involved in the study also continued to administer ineffective medication to
 the men so that they would not go seeking care elsewhere as they were under the

impression that they were receiving top quality government provided health care (Brandt,

1978).

7. What are some of the ethical issues at the core of the Tuskegee study?

The men involved in the study, the subjects, were not aware that they were participating in a

study at any point, they were consistently deceived and lied to, not only did they not provide

informed consent, they did not consent at all. The study was started with the knowledge that

keeping these men in the conditions that they were in intentionally to observe to progression of

their illness, even after efficient care was made available more widely, would be causing them

harm and possibly death. The doctors involved in the study did not care for the wellbeing of their

subjects and any point and saw their deaths and suffering, which were not inevitable, as simply

collaterals and necessary. The doctors who were aware of the implications also deceived some of

the medical professional involved in carrying the study out by lying to them about what it was

they were actually doing (Brandt, 1978).

8. According to Dr. James B. Lucas, Assistant Chief of the Venereal Disease Branch, what

was learned about the prevention and cure of syphilis from the Tuskegee study?

According to Dr. James B. Lucas, nothing was learned through the course of this study

that would be of any help to the medical field to prevent the disease, diagnose the disease,

or develop a cure to the disease. As such, according to him, this study did not bring

anything of value to the medical field concerning syphilis (though he did think that the

study should continue along its set course) (Brandt, 1978).

1. What did you learn from reading this article? If none of this was new to you, what do you

feel is most important?

I did not know anything about this study, its implication, or the full scope of medical racism in

the United States up to a recent point in history. I was aware of medical racism but not the full

scope of it or just how serious it was. It was horrifying to read this article and one of the hardest

reads I’ve had to do, I felt sicker and sicker with the beginning of every new paragraph. I did not

realize that there were ethical limitations and obligations that had already been established for

quite some time when these doctors fully disregarded ethical responsibilities when concerned

with black patients.

2. What did you learn about informed consent from this article? What does informed consent

look like in practice?

I realized just how many people need to be fully informed and need to consent for a study to be

ethical. I hadn’t realized the amount of people that need to be involved for studies of such a scale

to be able to run smoothly and how all of them need to be aware of exactly what the study

entails, what its goals are, the treatment of the subjects, the people involved, where the

information is going and so forth. Informed consent in practice looks like a lot of efficient and

thorough communication of information, something that was simply not done in this study.
 References

Canada, P. H. A. of. (2021, June 29). Government of Canada. Canada.ca. Retrieved March 1,

Brandt, A. M. (1978, January 1). Racism and research: The case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
The Hastings Center Report: 21-29. Retrieved March 1, 2023, from
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/3372911