The Real History Of Tuskegee

Loading

It’s been a dirty secret for decades. The secret? That our medical establishment in times past had used groups of poor people as guinea pigs, tested treatments on patients in mental hospitals and prisons and so forth. This history is one of the reasons there are so many safeguards put in place with any new study or test program.

Jonah Goldberg writes today about an oft mentioned program from our history that the liberals and blacks bring up pretty much every time the Wright “US infected blacks with AIDS” meme’ is thrown around:

The infamous Tuskegee experiment is the Medusa’s head of black left-wing paranoia. Whenever someone laments the fact that anywhere from 10 percent to 33 percent of African Americans believe the U.S. government invented AIDS to kill blacks, someone will say, “That’s not so crazy when you consider what happened at Tuskegee.”

But it is crazy. And it’s dishonest.

Wright says the U.S. government “purposely infected African-American men with syphilis.” This is a lie, and no knowledgeable historian says otherwise. And yet, this untruth pops up routinely. In March, CNN commentator Roland Martin defended Wright, saying, “That actually did, indeed, happen.” On Fox News, the allegation has gone unchallenged on Hannity & Colmes and The O’Reilly Factor. Obery Hendricks, a prominent author and visiting scholar at Princeton University, told O’Reilly “I do know that the government injected syphilis into black men at the Tuskegee Institute. Now we know that the government is capable of doing those things.”

To which O’Reilly responded: “All right. All governments have done bad things in every country.”

True enough. And what the U.S. did at Tuskegee was indeed bad, very bad. But it didn’t do what these people say it did.

So what did happen? In 1932, public health researchers set out to study syphilis, particularly among African Americans, who had higher infection rates than whites. They recruited 399 black men who already had syphilis. The doctors infected no one. In fact, the patients were selected in the first place because they were tertiary-stage syphilitics who were no longer contagious.

The researchers studied the progress of the disease, without treating it, for 40 years.

Prior to the availability of penicillin in the 1940s and 1950s, the researchers couldn’t have treated the men even if they wanted to. Even after standardized penicillin treatments were available, it wasn’t clear that the patients could have been helped. Some of the doctors believed that treating the decades-long infections would kill the men.

Among scholars who’ve studied Tuskegee, there’s a lot of debate about how much — if any — racism was involved in the experiment. But no one disputes that Tuskegee had nothing whatsoever to do with genocide or even a desire to spread the disease among the black population.

What was bad about the Tuskegee experiment was a callous disregard for the humanity and integrity of the patients. They were told they were getting “treatments” when they were merely being studied. They were lied to, treated as objects rather than citizens. This is even more offensive today, now that we have modern legal and ethical rules about informed consent — rules that did not exist when the study was launched. But it was still wrong.

Sure enough, the fact that they were lied to and never treated for their disease is bad. But they were not infected with it by the government. There were many abuses by our medical establishment over the course of our history but this does not somehow validate the ludicrous conspiracy theory thrown about by Rev. Wright.

One of the better questions by Jonah in his article is this one:

But why blacks remain the most reliable voters for the party of ever-expanding government power is something of a mystery. Indeed, it’s worth noting that the Tuskegee study, launched during the pre-dawn of the New Deal-era, was symptomatic of arrogant liberal government. The study “emerged out of a liberal progressive public health movement concerned about the health and well-being of the African-American population,” writes University of Chicago professor Richard Schweder. He adds: “The study was done with the full knowledge, endorsement and participation of African-American medical professionals, hospitals and research institutes.”

Liberals like to invoke Tuskegee as if it’s solely an indictment of what other people did, proof that we need more progressive government. But Tuskegee was in fact the poisoned fruit of progressive government.

And still a majority of the black population wants MORE government in their lives.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
11 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

“The study was done with the full knowledge, endorsement and participation of African-American medical professionals, hospitals and research institutes.”

_Were_ there “African-American medical professionals, hospitals and research institutes.” at that time?

Oh no. African Americans didn’t learn to read, write and eat with untensiles until the 60’s.
…………………………………………………….
Meharry Medical College – The first medical school founded for the sole purpose of educating blacks in the field of medicine. Founded in 1876, Meharry is located in Nashiville, Tennessee.
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams – In 1893 he made history when he opened the chest of a young black man who had been stabbed in a fight and performed the first open-heart surgery that saved the man’s life..
Dr. William Augustus Hinton – The first Black American professor at Harvard Medical School in 1949 where he taught preventive medicine and hygiene. Also developed the test used to detect the disease syphillis. ………….

My father, a white man with prostate cancer, was used in chemo-therapy experiments from the late 1940s till his death in 1956. Do you suppose they used him instead of a Rockefeller or Mellon because we were poor? Probably. But his agreement to participate might also have played a part.

Supposedly AIDS was traced back to 1939, a time when polio, small pox, malaria, legionnaires disease and even the common flu were maiming and killing thousands if not millions of people around the world each year. Nobody needed to find or invent a new disease to infect people because those were very effective diseases of their time. In fact the bioweapons factories were not trying to invent new diseases, but making the diseases they had more lethal.

That didn’t mean that the government wasn’t involved with attacking minorities during the same time. “Legal” lynchings of blacks were going on (accused of rape for kissing whites), “black” churches were bombed in daylight without any suspects and the FBI was spying on everyone while the CIA was purposefully destroying or preventing Democracies. The saying that “The Man” was putting the coloreds (non whites) and women down was partially true. It was also true some blacks tended to sabotage any outreach program such as the NAACP (originally rich and middle class whites which got together with black leaders), public education, social programs and welfare programs. That’s just like there are regions in the U.S. where there are groups of poor whites which rejected any benefit they had just because they were white. Most people of course took the programs provided to them and made something with their lives, but there will always be that bunch with self destructive behavior that blame their problems on others and there will be those people that sell that paranoia and those type of stories.

Another slander and mischaracterization of U.S. history, is that we purposely tried to infect Native Americans with infectious diseases for the sake of genocide:

UCLA professor Jared Diamond, author of the universally acclaimed bestseller “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies,” writes:

“Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population. The most populous and highly organized native societies of North America, the Mississippian chiefdoms, disappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600’s, even before Europeans themselves made their first settlement on the Mississippi River (page 78)….

“The main killers were Old World germs to which Indians had never been exposed, and against which they therefore had neither immune nor genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus rank top among the killers.” (page 212).

“As for the most advanced native societies of North America, those of the U.S. Southeast and the Mississippi River system, their destruction was accomplished largely by germs alone, introduced by early European explorers and advancing ahead of them” (page 374)

Obviously, the decimation of native population by European germs represents an enormous tragedy, but in no sense does it represent a crime. Stories of deliberate infection by passing along “small-pox blankets” are based exclusively on two letters from British soldiers in 1763, at the end of the bitter and bloody French and Indian War. By that time, Indian populations (including those in the area) had already been terribly impacted by smallpox, and there’s no evidence of a particularly devastating outbreak as a result of British policy.

For the most part, Indians were infected by devastating diseases even before they made direct contact with Europeans: other Indians who had already been exposed to the germs, carried them with them to virtually every corner of North America and many British explorers and settlers found empty, abandoned villages (as did the Pilgrims) and greatly reduced populations when they first arrived.

Sympathy for Native Americans and admiration for their cultures in no way requires a belief in European or American genocide. As Jared Diamond’s book (and countless others) makes clear, the mass migration of Europeans to the New World and the rapid displacement and replacement of Native populations is hardly a unique interchange in human history. On six continents, such shifting populations – with countless cruel invasions and occupations and social destructions and replacements – have been the rule rather than the exception.

The notion that unique viciousness to Native Americans represents our “original sin” fails to put European contact with these struggling Stone Age societies in any context whatever, and only serves the purposes of those who want to foster inappropriate guilt, uncertainty and shame in young Americans.

A nation ashamed of its past will fear its future.

One of the most urgent needs in culture and education for the United States of America is discarding the stupid, groundless and anti-American lies that characterize contemporary political correctness.

One myth is in regards to white European settlers purposely engaging in biological warfare by infecting blankets with smallbox:

Plains Indian Smallpox Genocide

by
O. Ned Eddins

The only documented case of smallpox blankets being given to Indians was by Captain Eucyer of the British army. I challenge anyone to offer documented proof, except for the two blankets given out by Captain Ecuyer at Fort Pitt, of smallpox infected blankets being deliberately given to Indians as a means of spreading smallpox. Letters by General Amherst and Colonel Bouquet mentioning spreading smallpox to Indians does not mean that this was ever carried out. Assumptions derived from letters and oral traditions are not proof of anything.

In a letter (1763) to Colonel Bouquet, Lord Amherst wrote, “Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them”.

Bouquet replied that he would try and use infected blankets as a means of introducing the disease among the Indians, but was wary of the effects that it would have on his own men…at least twenty-five percent or more of Bouquet’s soldiers would have been susceptible to the smallpox virus.

The Amherst letter has been used to support the proposition of germ warfare or genocide against native populations. Amherst may have discussed it in correspondence with Bouquet, but there is no evidence that Colonel Bouquet carried it out. As he mentioned in his reply, Bouquet was afraid of what it would do to his own men and with good reason. 1763 was twenty-three years before Jenner’s work on vaccination, and one hundred years before Pasteur advanced his germ theory. The only thing known about smallpox in 1763 was�age, color of skin, social status meant nothing to the smallpox virus…an infected person died or, if lucky enough to survive, was often disfigured for life. No matter how bad Amherst may have wanted to be rid of the Indians, it seems doubtful that he would unleash a disease on his soldiers that had already killed millions of his own countrymen.

There is no evidence that Col. Bouquet took any action on Amherst’s letter, but there is evidence that Captain Ecuyer at Fort Pitt did.

“Out of our regard for them (two Indian chiefs) we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect (William Trent).”

The incident with Captain Ecuyer occurred during the Pontiac Rebellion. There is also evidence that Ecuyer tried to control the spread of smallpox, at least from his own men.

In a letter to Bouquet, Captain Ecuyer writes that Fort Pitt is in good state of defense against all attempts from Savages, who are daily firing upon the Fort; unluckily the Small Pox has broken out in the garrison, for which he has built an Hospital under the Draw Bridge to prevent the Spreading of that distemper (Peter d’Errico, nativeweb.org).

In 1763, Fort Pitt was under siege by Indian forces under the command of Chief Pontiac…Pontiac Rebellion (Tebbel). With smallpox in the garrison at Fort Pitt and Indians attacking the fort, two blankets would have had little to do with the spread of smallpox among the Indians. A by far greater source for spreading the smallpox virus would have been infected blood from mutilated soldier and settler bodies, scalps, clothing, and in some cases cannibalism, which occurred during the Pontiac Rebellion. Every warrior that returned from Fort Pitt to Indian villages up and down the East coast with smallpox infected war trophies carried the smallpox virus with them. Contaminated warriors spreading the smallpox virus is never mentioned by proponents of Indian Genocide; it does not fit their biased agenda. This statement on smallpox is going to make a lot of people furious…good, that is the purpose. Before venting your ire, take a few minutes to read the entire article, think about it with an open mind, and then please respond with facts to back up your argument.

And still a majority of the black population wants MORE government in their lives

No, the majority of the black population wants more government money in their hands. Victimhood is extremely popular. I’ll never forget when I got a job in middle management of a nursing home at Christmastime the blacks came to me one by one wanting money for Christmas from me personally. Mainly because I made more money than they did. This has some kind of kinky idea of giving back to the community. I was a single mother with two teenagers and barely making it but I was perceived as rich by these people.

I can attest to the fact that there was no pennicillon available during the time of the Tuskegg mess. As a child in the forties I had chronic ears infections that turned to abcesses. The only thingdoctors knew to do was let the disease run its course. There was no cure for this orany other dieseases that pennicillon cured.

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA34A.htm

The article at the above link might help a bit.

Wow, I never questioned these myths until now. There has to be some way to rescue our educational system and stop the propagana that passes for academics.

blacks vote for libs because they give them more welfare benefits and food stamp cards. they love government for doing this, they see it as their right, ask any welfare worker how many formthe inner-city come in asking for their paychecks. its not only blacks, there are a whole bunch of white that do it also. i am not the reason that the blacks are down trodden. they are, they have done this to themselves. they make up these lies because it makes them feel better about sleeping around and not caring who with, they spead the illness because they just don’t care. they blame “the man”.
sorry, i guess this is my opinion, and today i am grumpy so i am putting it out there how i see it.

What about thereal atrocities against blacks?

Planned Parenthood Puts A Hit Out On Black Children
By Harry R. Jackson, Jr.
Monday, April 28, 2008

Last Thursday a group of black pastors released a letter calling for all presidential candidates and other politicians to return or refuse to accept campaign donations made by Planned Parenthood nationally. I was proud to be a part of that effort. A recent Wall Street Journal story cited that Planned Parenthood is contributing an unprecedented 10 million dollars to various political campaigns this election cycle.

At first blush this seems like an extravagant, if not frivolous, use of money. Only those who are aware of the 305 million dollars a year of federal money that this organization rakes in would understand this strategic move. When the average person thinks of special interest groups, they often look at big businesses or certain industry lobbyists. But this is not always the case.

Planned Parenthood has a public face that says they are supporting the rights of women to assert their reproductive rights. Unfortunately, recent investigations and reports suggest that this organization is actually peddling death in an aggressive and unethical manner. In Kansas the organization is under criminal investigation for falsifying documents and performing late term abortions. It faces 23 felony counts.

Planned Parenthood has also dealt in the realm of deception concerning the age of its customers. In Ohio, Planned Parenthood is being sued for failing to report the rape of a 16-year-old by her father. This is not the first time that center leaders have tried to bend age-related reporting requirement. Eleven months ago UCLA student Lila Rose appeared on the O’Reilly Factor stating the some Planned Parenthood centers attempt to hide child abuse or statutory rape by encouraging underage mothers to falsify their ages in order to receive an abortion.

Others believe that the organization, founded by Margaret Sanger, has actually swindled the government out of money. In California, former Los Angeles city officials have accused the California Planned Parenthood organization of defrauding taxpayers of over 180 million dollars.

What made us as black leaders decide to address the issue at this point in time? I cannot speak for all the other ministers, but I believe that my concerns are shared by many of them. The simple answer is that so many reports about Planned Parenthood’s blatant disrespect for the law have recently surfaced that it required response immediately. I believe that before these court cases and accusations become old news, people of conscience of all races must stand up and be counted.

If Planned Parenthood is brought into check, it will substantially affect the entire abortion industry. Planned Parenthood has 850 centers around the country and is the largest provider of abortions in the nation. In addition, experts estimate that 75% of Planned Parenthood centers are located in close proximity to minority neighborhoods.

Known as a eugenicist who spoke of sterilizing those she designated as “unfit,” founder Margaret Sanger had no love in her heart for blacks. Today scholars have discovered the following statement written by Sanger, “We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” As a result the black community is disproportionately affected by the posture, placement, and philosophy of this organization. Over 1,200 black babies are aborted every day in America which amounts to over 35% of the total number of babies aborted in the nation. This genocide teamed with the rise of HIV/AIDS deaths and murders may lead to negative population growth.

This a moral issue of great magnitude that can affect the black community for decades. A final straw that has broken the camel’s back has been added to the litany of problems that this organization has created — Planned Parenthood facilities around the country have been accused of accepting contributions from racist donors. A group of concerned people conducted their own “sting” operation which has exposed a willingness of Planned Parenthood employees to accommodate racist donors. In fact, clinic personnel in Ohio, New Mexico, Idaho and Oklahoma have been captured on tape pandering to a potential donor with a racist agenda.

In general, the media has turned a deaf ear to the issue of abortion. Reporters often call this issue divisive and polarizing. I am thrilled that there are a growing number of black leaders who are willing to stand up and be counted on this important issue. Interestingly, it is the black leadership in this anti Planned Parenthood initiative that is beginning to draw national attention. To the press, it’s a “man bites dog story” – a reversal of common wisdom. Now is the time for blacks and whites to work together, to strike a blow against the unethical practices of the “death industry” in America.

While antibiotics had not been invented at the time the experiment was started, salvarsan and related anti-syphilis compounds based on arsenic and mercury had existed for decades. Was treatment with these an option?