Belmont Report

From 1932 until 1972, the US Public Health Service conducted a study called the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male where it studied the long-term effects of the disease on about 400 poor, African American males. In the late 1940s, it was discovered that penicillin was a cure for syphilis, but the study continued and many of the test subjects were refused treatment and later died painful deaths of syphilis. The story came out in the Washington Star newspaper on July 25, 1972 and then in the New York Times. Congressional hearings were held and a controversy rightfully ensued.

It is difficult to read the Belmont report knowing the climate surrounding the report. The authors' cite the impetus to create this report, not because of the Tuskegee study which ended a few years before, but because of gaps in the Nuremberg code that was written after it was discovered that doctors were performing experiments on concentration camp prisoners. In this section, "Ethical Principles & Guidelines for Research Involving Human Subjects," they are defining previous history and codes, but it is difficult to read from a modern perspective when they don't mention the immediate reason for change until the end of Part B.

I am thankful for the Belmont report and the changes it created, but I wish the NIH would have been more honest in acknowledging its culpability and the situation that created the need for the report. It is also "interesting" that the government can direct its focus away from its own actions.

Further reading
Brandt, Allan M. "Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study." Originally printed in the Hastings Center Report, 1978, 8 (No. 6) 21-29. Reprinted in Sickness and Health in America, edited by Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers.