Skorton Leads Talk on Ethics of Bio Research

When 399 illiterate African American sharecroppers degenerated before the eyes of medical researchers between 1932 and 1972 during the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the American public was awakened to the controversial relationship between ethics and science. While the U.S. Public Health Service failed to provide the subjects with adequate medical care as they suffered from tertiary syphilis, the experiment, which was described in The New York Times as an “infamous chapter in the annals of American medical research,” spurred the American populous to ask complex questions highlighting bioethical dilemmas that define science research today: To what extent should scientific research adhere to a moral code?