The Tuskeegee syphilis study anniversary
The CDC is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study. I’m going to assume that a lot of misleading stuff will be written about that study, so I’m linking to a post I wrote on the subject in 2008 in an attempt to correct some of the misconceptions.
The Tuskegee syphilis study pales in comparison to the mRNA experiment.
Not the same thing, Geoffrey Britain; although it is true that the mRNA COVID shots were not studied for the usual length of time before approval for general use, because of the urgency of what was a dangerous virus; and I will always believe that extending their use, and requiring their use, among healthy younger people who were at very low risk of the disease was egregious malpractice.
I think a better, although not perfect, analogy to the immorality of the Tuskegee study after the late 1940s is our current rage for providing sex change procedures on minors without genuine informed consent and without much scientific justification for the “treatment.”
Well failure to provide effective inexpensive therapeutics seems a parallel.
Good point there, Miguel. Although the failure to provide therapeutics wasn’t racially targeted, so there’s that. Nobody was allowed to try them.
I read a book on the Tuskegee Experiment. Turned out the author worked in an office a block from mine. Went to talk to her. I asked about the black staff, nurses and such, in the study. What were they.
She figured they were something like “kapo”. That might be descriptive of their mindset, but they were not at risk of joining the experimental group. Himmler said the kapos would work hard since being demoted to the general population would get them killed immediately. This did not apply to the Tuskegee lower-level staff. But the distancing from the experimental group might be similar.
Richard Aubrey:
Please read my discussion of the use of the word “kapo” to describe situations nothing whatsoever like the situation that kapos faced.
In addition, the vast majority of Kapos were not Jewish.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2004/01/08/tuskegee-re-examined/
Callous indiffference over deliberate evil, sometimes you cant tell like in canada or europe
Example if you know a virus that was designed with your countries funds has been let loose and you do otherwise
Neo. Wasn’t my idea that the authoress made that connection. Her point was, I suspect, the degree of dis-identification with the subjects necessary for the job in Tuskegee.
I noticed just yesterday Rob Schneider tweeted that old lie about subjects being deliberately infected for the experiment.
Two excellent investigations. I also thought the subjects in the Tuskegee experiment had been deliberately given syphilis. I should have realized that most kapos weren’t Jewish, but didn’t. One thing, though: I wouldn’t necessarily assume that Leon Uris got all his facts right or had all the facts available to him that scholars have today.
I agree with Geoffrey Britain, there are many similarities in ethics between the Tuskegee Experiment and the Covid MRNA Gene therapy labeled a vaccine.
Dwaz; Abraxas:
I would bet that something like 75% of the people who have ever heard of Tuskeegee in the first place think that the researchers purposely infected the men. There are so many things like that where the truth is lost to propaganda.
Speaking of which, there’s the story of the smallpox-infected blankets.
Richard Aubrey:
Yes, but I wanted to emphasize the point about inappropriate use of the word “kapo.”
Neven (above, at 2:36 a.m.) pointed to Richard Shweder’s article, but without comment. That article deserves wide circulation: I think Shweder — a professor of cultural anthropology in a named chair at the University of Chicago — effectively torpedoes essentially all of the standard Tuskegee “indictment.” Here are a couple of pertinent excerpts:
‘The study was done with the full knowledge, endorsement and participation of African-American medical professionals, hospitals and research institutes. I learned that in Macon County in the early 1930s there was somewhere between about a 20 and 36 per cent infection rate for syphilis. I learned that the general mortality rate for the local white population of Macon County at that time was the same as the mortality rate for blacks (6). I learned that Eunice Rivers, an African-American nurse, whose voice seems informed, authoritative, and compassionate, was the key personnel for the project for nearly 40 years, and remained unwavering in her support for the study, even after it was labeled racist science and a program of controlled genocide. All this made me wonder whether perhaps the true meaning of ‘Tuskegee’ is more morally complex than I had supposed. While the physical context of the study was a segregated and racist South, this did not mean that the study itself was racist.”
And:
“[W]e should not presume that the life-course morbidity and mortality profiles of the Tuskegee men were significantly influenced for the worse by participation in the study. Between 1932 and the time penicillin was standardised, readily available and medically approved as a cure for syphilitic infections (which was well into the 1950s), the treatments of the day were weak and ineffective.
“By the time penicillin was available the men in the study had been infected for at least 20 years, and in most cases for much longer. A minority had died, some from complications (cardiovascular diseases) caused by syphilis, but this had occurred before an effective therapy was available. For a large number of the rest, by the 1950s their original infection would have been self-limiting or self-correcting. Of those many men who were still alive in the 1950s and 1960s it remains unclear whether penicillin treatment for late latent syphilis would have had any effect on their life expectancy or health profiles. If the syphilis infection was going to damage their heart valve or some other biological system, it would in all likelihood have done so long before the 1950s, and penicillin could not reverse that damage. Some forms of inflammation, if still caused by the infection, would presumably have been curable, but there is evidence that as the remarkable men from Tuskegee got older their life expectancy compared quite favourably with men from Macon County who were never infected.”
Whole thing here: https://www.spiked-online.com/2004/01/08/tuskegee-re-examined/
On the generic “Racism!” theme, coincidentally, a commenter at Mark Steyn’s website (comments are visible only to Steyn Club members) wrote yesterday:
“Why does racism exist? Racism is the default setting of human beings from time immemorial. We are inherently tribal organisms whose natural communities consist of about 150 near-to-distant relatives. Race is the extended family writ large. it is perfectly natural and appropriate for people to trust their own kin before outsiders. … Pretty much every ethnicity worldwide is racist in the sense of preferring their own people to live around, work with, and marry. The chief exception is modern white people, who have been shamed and brainwashed into self-hatred by those who would unseat us as leaders.”