this is what you get from hillbillies and conservative racists,
"Husband of All FBI n NSA Agents" <HusbandOfAllFBInNSAagents@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote in message news:fpi6nt$8gr$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmtuskegee1.html
>
> The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
>
> The U.S. government's 40-year experiment on black men with syphilis
>
> by Borgna Brunner
>
> "The United States government did something that was wrong-deeply,
> profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to
> integrity
> and equality for all our citizens... clearly racist."
>
> -President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the
> eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997
>
>
>
> For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service
> (PHS)
> conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis.
> These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the
> poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were
> suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being
> treated
> for "bad blood," their doctors had no intention of curing them of
syphilis
> at all.
>
> The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the
men,
> and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of
> tertiary syphilis-which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis,
> blindness, insanity, and death. "As I see it," one of the doctors
involved
> explained, "we have no further interest in these patients until they
die."
>
>
> Using Human Beings as Laboratory Animals
>
> The true nature of the experiment had to be kept from the subjects to
> ensure
> their cooperation. The sharecroppers' grossly disadvantaged lot in life
> made
> them easy to manipulate. Pleased at the prospect of free medical
> care-almost
> none of them had ever seen a doctor before-these unsophisticated and
> trusting men became the pawns in what James Jones, author of the
excellent
> history on the subject, Bad Blood, identified as "the longest
> nontherapeutic
> experiment on human beings in medical history."
>
> The study was meant to discover how syphilis affected blacks as opposed
to
> whites-the theory being that whites experienced more neurological
> complications from syphilis, whereas blacks were more susceptible to
> cardiovascular damage. How this knowledge would have changed clinical
> treatment of syphilis is uncertain.
>
> Although the PHS touted the study as one of great scientific merit, from
> the
> outset its actual benefits were hazy. It took almost forty years before
> someone involved in the study took a hard and honest look at the end
> results, re****ting that "nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a
> single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic
mission
> of controlling venereal disease in the United States."
>
> When the experiment was brought to the attention of the media in 1972,
> news
> anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that "used human
> beings
> as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it
takes
> syphilis to kill someone."
>
>
> A Heavy Price in the Name of Bad Science
>
> By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of
syphilis,
> 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been
> infected,
> and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis. How had
> these men been induced to endure a fatal disease in the name of science?
>
> To persuade the community to sup****t the experiment, one of the original
> doctors admitted it "was necessary to carry on this study under the
guise
> of
> a demonstration and provide treatment." At first, the men were
prescribed
> the syphilis remedies of the day-bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury-
> but
> in such small amounts that only 3 percent showed any improvement.
>
> These token doses of medicine were good public relations and did not
> interfere with the true aims of the study. Eventually, all syphilis
> treatment was replaced with "pink medicine"-aspirin.
>
> To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially
> dangerous
> spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of
promotional
> hype: "Last Chance for Special Free Treatment." The fact that autopsies
> would eventually be required was also concealed.
>
> As a doctor explained, "If the colored population becomes aware that
> accepting free hospital care means a post-mortem, every darky will leave
> Macon County..." Even the Surgeon General of the United States
> participated
> in enticing the men to remain in the experiment, sending them
certificates
> of appreciation after 25 years in the study.
>
>
> Following Doctors' Orders
>
>
> It takes little imagination to ascribe racist attitudes to the white
> government officials who ran the experiment, but what can one make of
the
> numerous African Americans who collaborated with them? The experiment's
> name
> comes from the Tuskegee Institute, the black university founded by
Booker
> T.
> Wa****ngton. Its affiliated hospital lent the PHS its medical facilities
> for
> the study, and other predominantly black institutions as well as local
> black
> doctors also participated. A black nurse, Eunice Rivers, was a central
> figure in the experiment for most of its forty years.
>
> promise of recognition by a prestigious government agency may have
> obscured
> the troubling aspects of the study for some. A Tuskegee doctor, for
> example,
> praised "the educational advantages offered our interns and nurses as
well
> as the added standing it will give the hospital." Nurse Rivers explained
> her
> role as one of passive obedience: "we were taught that we never
diagnosed,
> we never prescribed; we followed the doctor's instructions!"
>
> It is clear that the men in the experiment trusted her and that she
> sincerely cared about their well-being, but her unquestioning submission
> to
> authority eclipsed her moral judgment. Even after the experiment was
> exposed
> to public scrutiny, she genuinely felt nothing ethical had been amiss.
>
> One of the most chilling aspects of the experiment was how zealously the
> PHS
> kept these men from receiving treatment. When several nationwide
campaigns
> to eradicate venereal disease came to Macon County, the men were
prevented
> from participating. Even when penicillin-the first real cure for
> syphilis-was discovered in the 1940s, the Tuskegee men were deliberately
> denied the medication.
>
> During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were
> consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have the PHS
> exempt them. Pleased at their success, the PHS representative announced:
> "So
> far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment."
> The
> experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943), a public
health
> law requiring testing and treatment for venereal disease, and in spite
of
> the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which
> specified that "informed consent" was needed for experiments involving
> human
> beings.
>
> Blowing the Whistle
>
> The story finally broke in the Wa****ngton Star on July 25, 1972, in an
> article by Jean Heller of the Associated Press. Her source was Peter
> Buxtun,
> a former PHS venereal disease interviewer and one of the few whistle
> blowers
> over the years. The PHS, however, remained unrepentant, claiming the men
> had
> been "volunteers" and "were always happy to see the doctors," and an
> Alabama
> state health officer who had been involved claimed "somebody is trying
to
> make a mountain out of a molehill."
>
> Under the glare of publicity, the government ended their experiment, and
> for
> the first time provided the men with effective medical treatment for
> syphilis. Fred Gray, a lawyer who had previously defended Rosa Parks and
> Martin Luther King, filed a class action suit that provided a $10
million
> out-of-court settlement for the men and their families. Gray, however,
> named
> only whites and white organizations as defendants in the suit,
****traying
> Tuskegee as a black and white case when it was in fact more complex than
> that-black doctors and institutions had been involved from beginning to
> end.
>
> The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the
> appalling
> experiments performed by Nazi doctors on their Jewish victims during
World
> War II. Yet in addition to the medical and racist parallels, the PHS
> offered
> the same morally bankrupt defense offered at the Nuremberg trials: they
> claimed they were just carrying out orders, mere cogs in the wheel of
the
> PHS bureaucracy, exempt from personal responsibility.
>
> The study's other justification-for the greater good of science-is
equally
> spurious. Scientific protocol had been shoddy from the start. Since the
> men
> had in fact received some medication for syphilis in the beginning of
the
> study, however inadequate, it thereby corrupted the outcome of a study
of
> "untreated syphilis."
>
>
> The Legacy of Tuskegee
>
> In 1990, a survey found that 10 percent of African Americans believed
that
> the U.S. government created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks, and
> another 20 percent could not rule out the possibility that this might be
> true. As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the
> Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched.
>
> Who could imagine the government, all the way up to the Surgeon General
of
> the United States, deliberately allowing a group of its citizens to die
> from
> a terrible disease for the sake of an ill-conceived experiment? In light
> of
> this and many other shameful episodes in our history, African Americans'
> widespread mistrust of the government and white society in general
should
> not be a surprise to anyone.
>
> 1. All quotations in the article are from Bad Blood: The Tuskegee
Syphilis
> Experiment, James H. Jones, expanded edition (New York: Free Press,
1993).
>
>
>
>
>
|
