My blog posting hasn't been very consistent the past few weeks but I'm definitely going to change that.
I couple of weeks ago we read two articles on the two different instances of men being unethically tested for syphilis. In the year of 1932 in Macon County, Alabama, the Public Health Service alongside the Tuskegee institute conducted an experiment to test black men with syphilis, however what the men didn't know was that they in fact were being infected with the disease from the doctor. The doctors justified this practice by saying that they were looking for a cure for the disease and they offered the men free healthcare, meals, and burial insurance. This unethical study was supposed to only last 6 months but ended up lasting 40 years, from 1932 to 1972. It's incredible to me how such a demeaning, racist, and inhuman practice can go on for so long, but I guess I should take into consideration the time period this was in and the type of civil rights being granted to minorities at that time.
The other article was on case study similar to the Tuskegee experiment. In 1946 U.S. Public Health doctors conducted a study in a Guatemala prison, deliberately infecting 700 prisoners with syphilis. Because of the regulations of the prison in Guatemala, the doctors went about the experiment a different way. They had prostitutes who were infected with syphilis come and sleep with the prisoners so that they would contract the disease. If this was not successful, they would go so far as to literally pour the disease onto open scrapes on their penises, faces or arms, and would sometimes even inject it into their spine. All of this was going on for two years in Guatemala and the prisoners had no idea. This is mind boggling and really cause me to question what other unethical practices have been conducted for the benefit of our country. It's sad.
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