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The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Social Change, and the Future of Bioethics
Faulkner Law Review (2012)
  • David M. Smolin
Abstract
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was a critical turning point in the creation of modern bioethics. The disclosure of the study led to the Belmont Report and the embracing of the principlism method of bioethics. The Report, principlism method, and accompanying regulatory schemes have helped protect and empower research subjects. They serve as a partial corrective against the opportunities for abuse in the researcher-subject relationship, addressing the sharp power differentials in the relationship through insertion of certain ethical norms and bureaucratic processes.
This progress has left at least two tasks unfinished. First, it has become clearer over time that the principlism method of bioethics is an incomplete method unable to resolve a large proportion of bioethical dilemmas. The method was originally created in response to human subject research, and the attempt to construct from it a method that could resolve all or most bioethical dilemmas in all fields, from clinical ethics to reproductive issues, has been unsuccessful. Second, the responses to the Tuskegee experiment as to human subjects research have also proven incomplete and inadequate. The recurrence of Tuskegee-like incidents, for example in the KKI lead paint study, and in various research protocols conducted in developing nations, and the arguments put forward that such protocols were ethically defensible, indicate that fundamental dilemmas in human subjects research remain unresolved. In general, this article illustrates that too often the most infamous cases of human subjects research have been wrongly viewed as exceptions specific to an extreme context, from which no lessons need to be learned for contemporary research ethics. Upon closer examination, having positive motivations or believing oneself on the right side of history, is inadequate to prevent scientists and medical researchers from conducting or approving clearly unethical human subjects research. Hence, the field of bioethics will need sustained new efforts to avoid endlessly replicating clear violations of human rights in the context of human subjects research.
Keywords
  • Bioethics,
  • Human Subjects Research,
  • Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment,
  • Social Change
Publication Date
Spring 2012
Publisher Statement
Originally published in Vol 3, No. 2, Faulkner Law Review; cite as David M. Smolin, The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Social Change, and the Future of Bioethics, 3 Faulkner Law Review 229 (2012).
Citation Information
David M. Smolin, The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Social Change, and the Future of Bioethics, 3 Faulkner Law Review 229 (2012).
Creative Commons license
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-NC-SA International License.