Instruction
Case Study Assignment - The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Students are expected to prepare no more than 1-3 page(s) concise written response to the question(s) posed.
Please read the case on page 72 of your textbook then answer the questions posed... Also see assignment instructions posted below:
Case Study Assignment and Questions
Case Study # 1 - The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Read the case on page 72 of your textbook then answer the following questions ...
One requirement of the Tuskegee study was that the subjects not receive available treatment for a debilitating disease, a clear violation of normal medical practice. Would any study involving human subjects that violated normal medical practice necessarily be unethical? Discuss
The Tuskegee syphilis victims were not well informed about the study and in some cases were deliberately misinformed about the nature of the study in which they were participants. A basic guideline for human subject research, specified in both the Nuremberg Code and the Belmont Report is the requirement of informed consent. What would have constituted informed consent in the case of the Tuskegee Study? If such informed consent had been obtained from the subjects, would this remove all questions about whether the Study was ethical?
Eunice Rivers, the African-American nurse who played a vital role by befriending the Tuskegee Study participants and assuring their cooperation has justified her support for the project in terms of the fact that the attention that she and the other medical staff gave to the men was more than a non-enrolled, poor, Macon County resident was likely to receive. If you had been in her place, do you think you would have come to the same conclusion with regard to the ethical choices available to you? What approach to ethics did she embrace here? Explain
Ordinarily, one would not think of the media as the proper instrument for enforcing public morality. They had that role here, but should they have? Explain your answer
In experiments on infants, it is obviously impossible to obtain the informed consent of the subject. This is also true in experiments on senile individuals. Does this mean that ethical considerations preclude using such subjects in any experiment? Discuss
Some ideas for the case study questions above were taken from the following webpage:
"Case Study 3: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study" (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)
Graded assignments are due no later than Sunday at 11:55pm of the current week.
You have until 11:55 PM on Sunday to complete and submit this assignment.
The book is "Practical Ethics in Public Administration"