I happened upon an article in the form of a timeline which depicted the events of an experiment, in which doctors in the city in the state of Alabama tracked the progress of syphilis in black men. The doctors informed the test subjects that they were receiving medicine to treat their symptoms, when in fact the subjects were only having their disease monitored. I found the article quite interesting due to the fact that people who had taken an oath to protect their patients would conduct such an unorthodox experiment. There are many ethical systems involved, most prominently duty ethics: the doctors’ duty to their oath. I kept wondering why they would take such measures and came to the conclusion that they must have considered themselves to be loyal to their research and their other patients, as the results of the experiments could have possibly helped cure many more patients than solely those who were used as test subjects.

“The Tuskegee Timeline.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 June 2011. Web. 11 Sep. 2013. <http://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm>.