Question

your ideas about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study What experimental safeguards do we have now to avoid these situations? If we applied our 7 step decision making process to these situations, what would have been the outcome?

Answer 1

Tuskegee experiment:

The Tuskegee Study was a notorious clinical study on Untreated Syphilis conducted on the Negro Male. It is a racist and unethical medical experimentation taken placed during the period 1932 to 1972, nearly 400 impoverished and poorly educated African-American men diagnosed with latent syphilis (no obvious symptoms at this stage but they had the infection). The main aim of this unethical medical experimentation was to see whether syphilis affected black men differently from white men. Before the treatment they never told they had syphilis and were never treated for it. The participants were devalued due to their African-American background, exploited, uninformed about their own pertinent medical details, and effective, potentially life-saving antibiotic treatment was withheld. During these studies the institution offered free food, free rides and free medical treatment to participants and the medical staff allowed nothing to interfere with their work.

7 step decision making process implementation in Tuskegee Syphilis situation:

During the decision making process the 7 steps can contribute towards making the best decision as possible.

1. Define the problem: It is where the problem is identified and it can helps to identifying the scope of problem in hand.

2. Analyze the problem: It is where analysis of cause of problem is done and it can help to identify the cause of problem.

3. Alternative solutions: It is where all possible alternatives are identified and it can help to broaden the horizon of all possible solutions.

4. Select the best alternate: Here all the alternate pros and cons are identified and best option is selected and it can help to make most effective solution

5. Implement the decision: Here the plan to implement the decision is prepared and it can help to an effective and efficient execution of plan.

6. Follow up: Constant check on the progress is made to keep plan schedule within estimated time and it can help to keep the progress of project to desired level.

7. Review your decision: Here the decision is reviewed on the expected benefits with results achieved from the decision and it can help to take a corrective action as per results achieved.

Nowadays global nature of health research was drastically increased and in particularly the conduct of clinical trials involving human participants, has highlighted a number of ethical issues, especially in those situations in which researchers or research sponsors from one country wish to conduct research in another country. International collaborative biomedical research have increased during the past decade, long-standing questions about the ethics of designing, conducting, and following up on international clinical trials have reemerged. The studies in question might simply be one way of helping the host country address a public health problem, or they might reflect a research sponsor´s assessment that the foreign location is a more convenient, efficient, or less trouble-some site for conducting a particular clinical trial. Some of these issues have begun to take center stage because of the concern that research conducted by scientists from more prosperous countries in poorer nations that are more heavily burdened by disease may, at times, be seen as imposing ethically inappropriate burdens on the host country and on those who participate in the research trials. They might also represent a joint effort to address an important health concern faced by both parties.  Some observers believe that market forces have pressured private companies to become more efficient in the conduct of research, which may absent vigilance compromise the protection of research participants. The potential for such exploitation is cause for a concerted effort to ensure that protections are in place for all persons who participate in international clinical trials.