Unethical acts in medical researchers can be traced back to the past, where some races felt that they were superior over others. The superior races thought that they could conduct medical tests on the inferior races even without their consent. The Tuskegee Project, for example, which took place from 1930 to 1972, involving more than 600 African American men, with 399 diagnosed with syphilis. The participants of the study did not get information about their health condition but were lied to that they had a bad blood condition and even received placebos, vitamin tablets or aspirin as treatment. The men were used to find a cure for syphilis and in 1947, penicillin was discovered, and none of the participants were treated. The study became a public concern the deaths of 28 participants, other 100 died of related complications, 48 wives of the patients had been infected and nineteen children born with related infections.
The Tuskegee Project did not uphold the rights of protecting patients. After diagnosis, a patient has the right to know about their health conditions, and receive the right treatment. That was not the case in the project. It indicates the levels of unethical acts. The doctors did not care about how syphilis would be spread to the women and children. A cure was discovered, and to make it worse; the participants did not get treated. The government should practice certain levels of authority in healthcare by ensuring that the rights of patients are upheld. When unethical acts are discovered, the punishment administered should be a lesson to other medical providers (American Nurses Association, 2015). Patients should never be forced to participate in medical studies. They should be informed and let to decide, where the final decision should be respected.
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Reference
American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements. Retrieved from https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/ethics/code-of-ethics-for-nurses/coe-view-only/
