Guinea Pig Kids: Myth or Modern Tuskegee?

• In Event: 118 - Regular Session. Ethics and Science

Abstract

The Tuskegee syphilis study represents a nadir in health research in the U.S., when individuals’ bodies were used to satisfy researchers’ curiosity with no anticipated clinical benefit. The study is often used these days as a teaching case, in research methods classes and biomedical ethics training, symbolizing the past, before the federal government intervened and created human protections regulations to protect research participants. The Tuskegee study continues to have other ripple effects, contributing to African Americans' distrust of health research. This paper analyzes three contemporary medical experiments involving African American children. We examine the individual and institutional actors that implemented these studies and those that protested against them, and we compare the roles that African American and mainstream media played in covering and critiquing the studies. Media coverage of these contemporary medical experiments suggests that the seeds of distrust in biomedicine are broadcast widely in the U.S. today.

Authors

• Valerie R. Leiter, Simmons College

• Sarah Herman, Simmons College