Ethical considerations of the human research: syphilis experiments and denial of drug therapy
Identificadores
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12020/756ISSN: 2161-1459
ISSN: 10.4172/2161-1459.1000e124
Fecha
2013-10-31Tipo de documento
articleÁrea/s de conocimiento
PsicologíaResumen
Syphilis has historically been considered a special disease as sexually
transmitted disease and because no effective treatments were disposable
for years. At the end of XV century first cases were reported and until
beginning of XX century not scientific advances were made: Schaudinn
and Hoffmann discovered the germ which caused disease in 1905
(Treponema pallidum) and few years later serological test for diagnoses
were developed. Fleming had discovered penicillin in 1928 but it was
not used in medical practice before World War II (WWII). Military
physicians from United States used penicillin for treating syphilis in
Pacific troops in December 1943 [1]. Treatment was successful and in
1947 penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Before
it, syphilis was a multisystemic, chronic, painful and deadly disease.
Due to penicillin, prospects changed radically. The successful was such
as in middle 50’s incidence of syphilis was so low that many scientists
believed that syphilis would be soon eradicated [2].
Once efficacy of treatment was established, any patient affected
from syphilis should be treated with penicillin. However, numerous
researches were performed on which, deliberately, patients did not
receive any treatment just for studying disease spreads and they were
even inoculated with syphilis to determine optimum treatment doses.
In other cases treatment was not administered, even when infected
patients could transmit the disease to their sexual partners and
descendants. We comment three examples that illustrate this unethical
approach.