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Session description: The session will provide an introduction to the ethics of research involving human participants. It will ad-dress the history of research ethics, present a contemporary eth-ical framework, and discuss its application to differing kinds of research studies. The ethical framework consists of four principles: respect for persons, beneficence, justice, and respect for communities. Each principle provides the foundation for ethical rules, including requirements for informed consent and confidentiality of health information. Taken together these ethical principles and rules provide a comprehensive framework for the analysis of ethical challenges in health research.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was initiated because known treatments for syphilis, in 1932, had shown little demonstrated effect, in addition to being toxic and dangerous. The dependent variable in the Tuskegee Experiment (the knowledge researchers wanted), was whether persons with syphilis were, in fact, better off without the treatment.

In 1932, the Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began a study to record the natural history of syphilis in hopes of justifying treatment programs for blacks. It was called the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male."