Gynaecology

"The Medical ethics of the 'Father of Gynaecology', Dr J Marion Sims" by Durrenda Ojanuga

Research Question: has the history of medical science been built on the foundation of unethical medical research/experimentation on African Americans?

Summary: Dr. Sims used female slaves as research subjects over a four-year period of experimentation. This paper discusses the controversy surrounding his use of powerless women and whether his actions were acceptable during that historical period. Vesico-Vaginal fistula (VVF) results in a tear from the bladder to the vagina, caused by obstructed labor. In the Antebellum South, slave-women , due to poor nutrition, lack of prenatal care, and births at an early age were at risk of VVF. Dr. Sims used slave women to develop his successful fistula operation in 1849. He has been credited with developing the medical specialty of gynaecology and is considered the father of gynaecology. Dr. Sims serves as a classic example of the evils of slavery and the misuse of human subjects for medical research. Kaiser defended Dr. Sims abuse of enslaved African-American women on the grounds that he was a man of his time and should not be judged by present-day standards. The author then goes to pinpoint particular cases during the same time period in which these physicians made leaps and bound in medicine without using human subjects. Sims manipulated the social institution of slavery to perform human experimentation, which by an standard is unacceptable. Article allowed two different perspectives based on ethics. What is considered ethical and unethical?

This article has to be one of the many articles I have read that has swayed my judgment of the topic. To believe that the man who many are inspired by and many look up too used women to advance his career unethically. He knew what he was doing because in his Biography he assumed that Black women are like cattle and can stand the pain without medications unlike white women who are fragile and delicate.

Ojanuga, Durrenda. "The Medical ethics of the 'Father of Gynaecology', Dr J Marion Sims." Journal of Medical Ethics 19 (1993): 28-31. Print.