The Lasting Legacy Of The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The Lasting Legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Passed down from generation to generation, African Americans have recounted the horror stories concerning the humiliation and abuse endured from the American medical community. The institution of systematic racism and discrimination leads Blacks further into a culture of untrusting those who have taken the sacred Hippocratic Oath. In the book Medical Apartheid author Harriet Washington (2006) uses the term â€Å"Black iatrophobia† to define the African American culture of being fearful of medicine; this fear is attributed to an extensive history of inhumane experimentation against the Black race in the United States from the days of colonial slavery to the era of modern medicine. â€Å"Health disparities adversely affect groups of people who have systematically experienced greater obstacles to health based on their racial or ethnic group† (Purnell, 2013, p. 6). Despite these horrific ordeals faced by Blacks, disparities in healthcare are progressing and the gaps in healthcare equality are closing between Whites. Contemporary nursing continues to evolve wherefore the patient’s care is from a holistic standpoint, establishing that in order to provide excellent health care the person’s culture and care practices need to be considered. The plight of the participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis study were not in vain; social policy and legislation has since been put in place to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. One of theShow MoreRelatedethical decision making16006 Words   |  65 Pagessituations. The philosophical discipline of ethics is the study of how we should behave, or how to determine the right thing to do in our interactions with others. Bioethics is the common name for the study of ethics as it relates to health and the moral problems that arise as a result of advances in health technologies and our increasing ability to do more to treat illness and prolong life. The theories resulting from ethical study provide a guide to examining ethical situations and to articulating