The Tuskegee Study
For almost a half century, syphilis infected black men from Macon County, Alabama were lied to, untreated for syphilis and then left to die, all in the name of science. Or was it really done for a scientific purpose? It took nearly fifty years for out government to realize that this experiment was truly unscientific. But it was too late to save the men that had already died or crippled because of this disease. There are many reasons and facts that back the idea that the Tuskegee experiment was unscientific, from the selection of an unbiased test group to the use of no control groups. From the beginning of this experiment there was proof that this experiment was more than a study to see the effects of syphilis infected black men but to try and prove that the black race was inferior to the white race.Racism plays a huge part in the reason of why this experiment was so unscientific. During this time period people in the south were living under "Jim Crow Laws", which were ways the states could twist around the Constitutional Amendments to make segregation legal. The way racism affected this experiment was clearly stated during the Senate
hearing, when one of the Senators ask, Nurse Evers in her own opinion would you really think that white men would have been treated the same way that the black men were treated. What this experiment was really trying to prove was a scientific way to show that black men were inferior to white men. This entire experiment was just a cover up, a cover up to hide a plan which would keep the black population from becoming successful and moving up the social ladder. A huge reason that this experiment was unscientific was of the study group that was chosen to experiment. In a true scientific experiment, test subjects are normally chosen through a form of lottery or chosen at random. In the Tuskegee study, an unbiased four hundred poor, mainly illiterate, African-American sharecroppers were picked for this experiment. The reason these men were chosen to play the guinea pigs was because these men were at the lowest social and economic rung in the black society. They were also chosen because they wouldn't ask questions and were easily fooled by the doctors. The doctors promised the men treatment for the disease but because they wanted to see the affe
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Approximate Word count = 776
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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