Lost of Research Ethics: Tuskegee Syphilis & Zimbardo’s Prison

The common aim of research ethics is to ensure that projects involving human participants are carried out without causing any harm to the subjects involved. The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment and Phillip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment are examples of unethical research studies that violated the rights and protection of research participants. This “Zimbardo’s Prison and Tuskegee Syphilis experiment' essay is seeks to analyse a result of these horrific studies. Formal standards and guidelines have now been created to prevent participants from being taken advantage of and to ensure their rights are being protected.

The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment which lasted from 1930 until 1972 and involved around 399 African American men, was created to study the “natural” progression of how syphilis attacks the body when left untreated . The United States Public Health Service was responsible for funding this study and the government doctors promised medicine for black men with syphilis, although their motives were to investigate the disease rather than to cure it. The researchers behind this study knew the vulnerability of the African American community due to economic disadvantage, racial oppression, and the lack of access to formal education so they chose to exploit the men of this community and use them as test subjects. In order to conduct this study , the researchers advertised “special treatment for bad blood” to attract these men to participate, they also promised free physicals , meals , and burial insurance for those who agreed to allow an autopsy in the event of their death. The doctors of this study provided these men with placebo pills such as aspirin, vitamins, etc; to keep up with the appearance of authentic treatment. The men were also subjected to having their blood samples taken, as well as occasional spine taps which they advertised as a “special free treatment” when in reality it offered no health benefits and was a painful procedure that could trigger severe headaches and nausea.

The men continued to suffer from painful conditions as a result of a lack of treatment from this disease, and the researchers did nothing to help them. Even when penicillin was discovered as a cure for syphilis in the mid 1940s, the US government went to unimaginable lengths to prevent the men in the study from receiving this treatment. There were many ethical violations that occurred throughout this study being conducted. The concept of voluntary informed consent is detrimental to a research study, and the researchers violated ethics by immorally gaining consent through deception and manipulation.

The black participants were deprived of their right of even knowing the disease they were battling, they were lied to from the beginning until the end. Physicians are also required to disclose information about a patient's health condition, however the black men of this study never even knew that it was syphilis attacking their body, they were only told that they had “bad blood”. The ethical issue of racism is also prevalent, the fact that there were only blacks chosen for this research shows the true intentions of those behind this study. The African American men were seen as disposable , which is why the researchers felt little to no regret about the atrocious acts they committed during this study which lead to the untimely death of many of these men. The study was also unethical because when the cure was discovered (penicillin) the researchers did not offer it to the subjects and actually prevented them from receiving any sort of treatment for this condition.

Zimbardo’s Prison experiment in 1971 was originally created to “understand the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels, and social expectations in a simulated prison experiment”. Zimbardo’s study consisted of 24 male university students who responded to a newspaper advert. They were then randomly assigned to either the prisoner group or guard group. The participants were paid around $15 a day and were selected on the basis that they were mentally and physically stable. In order to make the experiment feel as realistic as possible, the “prisoners” were arrested by local police and their fingerprints and clothes were taken and instead they were given a smock with a number on it with chains placed around their ankles. The prisoners were to remain in the mock prison for 24 hours a day throughout the study.

The researchers were able to observe and monitor the behavior of the guards and prisoners using hidden microphones and cameras. Although the study was originally planned to last 14 days, it had to be shut down after six days due to what happened to the participants. The guards became extremely abusive and this lead to the prisoners experiencing high levels of distress and anxiety. Zimbardo who acted as prison warden, permitted the guards to interact in any way they wanted with the prisoners. Which lead to them dehumanizing the prisoners through various methods, for example the guards would wake the prisoners during the night and force them to clean toilets with their bare hands. This experiment is now frequently cited as an example of research that is conducted unethically. One violation is that the consent form that was given to the participants lacked a full description of what could have taken place. Another violation was that the prisoners were physically harmed after being told that they were not going to be harmed. The ethical code violations does not only stop at physical but the prisoners were traumatized and suffered mentally and psychologically as a result.

In 1964, a young woman by the name of Kitty Genovese was brutally stabbed on her way home after working late. In her neighborhood of Queens, New York many heard her screams as she attempted to flee from her attacker, however no one helped or even called the police until it was too late. This case shocked the state of New York , as well as people everywhere because if someone had helped her , she would have survived. Researchers believe the reason why no one attempted to help her was due to the bystander effect. The bystander effect is what occurs when the presence of others discourages a person from intervening even when the situation is an emergency. Experiments on the bystander effect can be unethical due to the deception that may be involved in attempting to gain an authentic reaction from participants. In order for the bystander effect to truly be studied there needs to be an emergency situation or at least the appearance of one , which can cause participants to feel extreme stress. In order for the experiment to be conducted ethically even if deception is involved initially, is for researchers to fully debrief the individuals involved as soon as they are able to .

In conclusion, when research is seen as more valuable than the lives of the participants then it is almost certain that their rights and ethics will be compromised throughout the study. The damage that has occurred as a result of the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment and Zimbardo’s prison experiment is irreversible , however we now have guidelines and standards set in place to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. Ethical research can be conducted as long as researchers uphold these standards and protect their participants rather than exploiting them as subjects.