Dr. Henley, you are correct and I was wrong. They were not infected by the government but acquired the syphilis on their own. I also checked Wikipedia on this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
This whole thing was cooked up by the CDC, our CDC. The ethical issues of informed consent remain.
Ethical implications
The U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee highlighted issues in race and science.
[55] The aftershocks of this study, and other
human experiments in the United States, led to the establishment of the
National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and the
National Research Act.
[16] The latter requires the establishment of institutional review boards (IRBs) at institutions receiving federal support (such as grants, cooperative agreements, or contracts). Foreign consent procedures can be substituted which offer similar protections and must be submitted to the
Federal Register unless a statute or Executive Order requires otherwise.
[16]
In the period following World War II, the revelation of
the Holocaust and related
Nazi medical abuses brought about changes in international law. Western allies formulated the
Nuremberg Code to protect the rights of research subjects. In 1964, the
World Health Organization's
Declaration of Helsinki specified that experiments involving human beings needed the "informed consent" of participants.
[56] In spite of these events, the protocols of the study were not re-evaluated according to the new standards, even though whether or not the study should continue was re-evaluated several times (including in 1969 by the CDC). U.S. government officials and medical professionals kept silent and the study did not end until 1972, nearly three decades after the Nuremberg trials.
[11]
Writer James Jones said that the physicians were fixated on African-American sexuality. They believed that African-Americans willingly had sexual relations with infected persons (although no one had been told his diagnosis).
[57] Due to the lack of information, the participants were manipulated into continuing the study without full knowledge of their role or their choices.
[58] Since the late 20th century, IRBs established in association with clinical studies requirements that all involved in the study be willing and voluntary participants.
[59]
The Tuskegee University Legacy Museum has on display a check issued by the United States government on behalf of Dan Carlis to Lloyd Clements, Jr., a descendant of one of the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee participants.
[60] Lloyd Clements, Jr.'s great-grandfather Dan Carlis and two of his uncles, Ludie Clements and Sylvester Carlis, were in the study. Original legal paperwork for Sylvester Carlis related to the study is on display at the museum as well. Lloyd Clements, Jr. has worked with noted historian Susan Reverby concerning his family's involvement with the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee.
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