#tuskegee experiments

Please read that again: White institutions experimented on young Black men to observe what effects syphilis and other STDs would have on human beings.

What they did NOT do was, experiment on Black men exposed to syphilis to see what would happen to Black people.

Do you understand the implications here?

THEY KNEW THAT BLACK MEN WERE HUMAN BEINGS, JUST. LIKE. THEM.

White people knew this. They understood that if a disease affects a human being who happened to be Black, then it would likely have similar effects on white people. Racists have always understood that Black human beings were human, just like them.

This fact makes racism even more evil and insidious.

And yet, we still have things like medical racism, where “doctors” and “healthcare professionals” treat Black people—not “people of color” but specifically Black people—as if we are somehow different; as if we somehow do not experience pain in the same way as other human beings.

Here is the hypocrisy: Black people are human enough to experiment on, and we are human enough to use our very cells for cures to cancers that effect all humans, but somehow we still are not quite human enough to be treated humanely … we aren’t quite human enough to be treated equally. Not human enough to be seen as human.

You know how capitalism privatizes the wealth but socializes the poverty? It’s exactly the same with anti-Blackness. Institutions will monetize Blackness when it is profitable, and demonize Blackness at all other times.

This is not a mistake, nor is it coincidental that this paradigm - anti-Blackness, racism and profitizing pain & inequalities - aligns so neatly with capitalism.

NEW YORK (AP) — Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who revealed that the U.S. government allowed hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama to go untreated for syphilis in what became known as the Tuskegee study, has died. He was 86.

Buxtun died May 18 of Alzheimer’s disease in Rocklin, California, according to his attorney, Minna Fernan.

Buxtun is revered as a hero to public health scholars and ethicists for his role in bringing to light the most notorious medical research scandal in U.S. history. Documents that Buxtun provided to The Associated Press, and its subsequent investigation and reporting, led to a public outcry that ended the study in 1972.

Forty years earlier, in 1932, federal scientists began studying 400 Black men in Tuskegee, Alabama, who were infected with syphilis. When antibiotics became available in the 1940s that could treat the disease, federal health officials ordered that the drugs be withheld. The study became an observation of how the disease ravaged the body over time.

In the mid-1960s, Buxtun was a federal public health employee working in San Francisco when he overheard a co-worker talking about the study. The research wasn’t exactly a secret — about a dozen medical journal articles about it had been published in the previous 20 years. But hardly anyone had raised any concerns about how the experiment was being conducted.

“This study was completely accepted by the American medical community,” said Ted Pestorius of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking at a 2022 program marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the study.

Buxtun had a different reaction. After learning more about the study, he raised ethical concerns in a 1966 letter to officials at the CDC. In 1967, he was summoned to a meeting in Atlanta, where he was chewed out by agency officials for what they deemed to be impertinence. Repeatedly, agency leaders rejected his complaints and his call for the men in Tuskegee to be treated.

He left the U.S. Public Health Service and attended law school, but the study ate at him. In 1972, he provided documents about the research to Edith Lederer, an AP reporter he had met in San Francisco. Lederer passed the documents to AP investigative reporter Jean Heller, telling her colleague, “I think there might be something here.”

Heller’s story was published on July 25, 1972, leading to Congressional hearings, a class-action lawsuit that resulted in a $10 million settlement and the study’s termination about four months later. In 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized for the study, calling it “shameful.”

The leader of a group dedicated to the memory of the study participants said Monday they are grateful to Buxtun for exposing the experiment.

“We are thankful for his honesty and his courage,” said Lille Tyson Head, whose father was in the study.

Black men infected with syphilis without knowing it, infecting their wives, and bearing children with congenital syphilis. All done by the American public health service until the 70′s. What a fucked up world this is. 

I, on the other hand, think we should talk about it. I willingly bring it up. The evil, illegal, disgusting crimes committed against African Americans, has been reduced to an educational tidbit about immoralism and unethical practices in public health. 

A Thing Doesn't Go Away Until the Last Thing Is Disclosed | The Tuskegee Experiment 2014!

This is an open letter and call to action-- to my many compassionate friends:

I've added a new project on my plate and am advocating for my lifelong friend Valerie, who's Dad is a living survivor of the infamous Tuskegee Experiments.  When time permits, I need your help in the form of 'connecting with Valerie on her social networks and then if you will,  sharing' …with key people in your network.  Will you please 'Friend' and 'Like' Valerie's Facebook page linked here?

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All those long years ago in Macon County, Alabama, our Leaders may not want us to know that students enrolled at Tuskegee Institute, unmixed from any military or war, like my friend’s dad, Mr. Ford-- were also injected. They were merely enrolled students and therefore, a very convenient subject.

And like her father, there are probably many more survivors out in the World and it is Valerie's wish to locate these persons because they all need the right kind of health care and explanations for what surely must be subsequent ‘mysterious medical ailments’ they and their off springs may have.

As I listen to Valerie tell her story while Mrs. Ford quietly sits to our side, I remembered the emotional outbursts her Dad would make when we were kids.  When he took a nap, we were careful to walk softly and keep quiet so as not to alarm him. Valerie’s Dad was only a Freshman when injected.  When I look at the documentary videos for what we know today as the Tuskegee Experiments (video above), it saddens me to see these “injections” were given in an uncontrolled, unsanitary environment… in the middle of sharecrop fields or in the middle of a dirt road!  Can you imagine this in present day society?

To this effort, I'm assisting Valerie, a Spelman political science major and Harvard University law grad-- with the design of a website this week and I’ll let you know the link later. Until then, here's her FB page-- which we'll probably convert to a business Page soon.

I need your help in spreading the word to 'key' persons in investigative journalism, advocacy, good government sources, progressive media outlets who will pick up this story and run with it. Valerie's goal is to secure better health care for her Dad who is currently in a VA hospital as well as for those persons Worldwide, who may not know ...still... they were included in this horrific experiment.  I say Worldwide since the Tuskegee Experiments were also performed on unsuspecting persons in Guatemala, Cuba and I believe a few more outlying areas in the World.  This too is a little known fact.

ADDITIONALLY, according to former President Bill Clinton's infamous 2012 apology, many physicians were also wrongly accused of participating in this experiment and I believe this glossed over ‘fact’ should be more noted.

A thing doesn't go away until the last thing is disclosed. And it's just simply  T.I.M.E.  for our governments to add a much lacking ingredient absent heretofore from "For the people by the people" doctrine, and that is—to know what it means to be human ...and governance accordingly.  A responsible government can only be had when our leaders seek a bit of humility and go forward with integrity of Spirit. 

Enough is enough and it is  T.I.M.E.  to do the right thing. Thanks for reading friends.  P.S. If you're new to my rants and ramblings get more here by subscribing.