My uncle Freddi 0 and Lee Tyson and the other 600 black laborers who were recruitedunbeknownst to them, in a study on syphilis, they trusted the institutions, they trusted the experts, the doctors who came to examine them. But they were betrayed. a wound, this one of the Tuskegee experiment – hundreds of men used as guinea pigs – that remains deeply etched in the consciousness of African Americans. It explains, at least in part, the reluctance of many blacks to get vaccinated. a wrong attitude, but this trauma still weighs, decades later. Omar Neal was the mayor of this Alabama city full of symbolism for the African American community for nearly ten years: home to a university founded in the late nineteenth century by Booker Washington, a great black educator, adviser to presidents, and also home to the base where the squadrons of black pilots (segregated) who fought in World War II, the Tuskegee Airmen, also celebrated in a film, were formed ( Red Tails) for the proven value in the European and Pacific skies. But this is also the site of a secret experiment, which lasted 40 years, to study the effects of syphilis on treated and untreated patients.
Omar Neal, former mayor of Tuskegee, Alabama, a symbolic town of American segregation, under a statue commemorating this sacrifice
THEY WERE POOR, THEY WERE CONVINCED BY THE PEOPLE THEY TRUSTED MOST. THEIR SHEPHERDS, WHO WERE PUSHED BY THE DOCTORS. RECRUITMENT AND THE EFFECTS ON THE ORGANS
In 1932, 600 men – all male, all colored, poor laborers from Macon County – were recruited by the Department of Health to study the effects of venereal disease on human organs. Four hundred had congenital syphilis, passed on from their parents, 200 were healthy and were used as a control group. They were persuaded to undergo periodic tests at the university hospital with promises of free treatment and little else, without explaining to them the nature and purpose of the experiment.. The sick were never cured: they were given simple placebos. The study, presented as a one-semester experiment, actually went on for decades.
The ceremony in which Bill Clinton apologized to the victims of Tuskegee, in 1997
The price of the experiments and the criminal choice
When penicillin arrived in 1947, the definitive cure was not given to them. The study went on until 1972, when Associated Press reporters uncovered the horrendous story. There was a congressional investigation and the study was stopped: 125 of the 600 had in the meantime died of syphilis, 40 wives and 19 children had been infected. There were lawsuits and indemnities, and in 1997 President Bill Clinton officially apologized on behalf of the American people. To the heirs because in the meantime the victims had all disappeared.
THE EXPERIMENT COULD BE JUSTIFIED, BUT THE SCAREST THING THAT AFTER 4 YEARS THE DATA WERE THERE, INSTEAD YOU GO FORWARD: 125 DIED OF THOSE 600
The scariest thing is not so much the experiment itself that at first it might have been justified, explains Rueben Warren, a scholar who left the CDC in Atlanta, the federal agency that monitors the health of Americans, to go and run the National Center for Bioethics, here in Tuskegee. But after four years, the researchers had all the data they wanted. At that point, instead of going to treatment, it was decided to go on indefinitely. And a responsible person never came out. Those 600 men had now lost their identity: they had become containers of organs to be dissected, their death was expected for the autopsy. Even worse: these poor, very religious farmers were recruited into their churches.
Exams in the university of the community of color
Betrayed by the people they believed most, their shepherds, who, unaware, were pushed by the doctors. Who, then, examined them here, in the university of the community of color: the place where they should have been treated, adds Warren, who has dedicated a book to this tragic story. Think about this when you hear about the distrust of many African Americans for vaccinations. It is wrong and we fight it: the vaccine lives today, especially for blacks, the most exposed to the virus. But that wound of trust never healed.
Laws and latent racism
Lillie Tyson Head, daughter of an experiment victim and president of the Voice of Our Fathers foundation, also explains that the commitment to keep alive the memory of this case of denied humanity today is accompanied by an effort to prevent those who are understandably angry and confused. , listen to extreme messages like that of the black radical leader Louis Farrakhan that the vaccine is a vial of death, a white trap that African Americans must not fall into. The syphilis experiment comments Omar Neal who is keen to be photographed on the university campus under the statue of Booker Washington which lifts the veil of ignorance dropped before the eyes of an annihilated black man, the metaphor of so many failed attempts to address racial issues on an equal footing. The pushes for progress have always been there, but when – from the end of slavery, to civil rights, to the black president – distances have been reduced, there has always been a reaction: the Jim Crow laws, de facto segregation on economic and cultural grounds , free men treated worse than slaves, human guinea pigs. Omar disappointed by the little that Obama managed to do, but adds that he too was the victim of a reaction: The latent racism of a large part of society has tied his hands: a black president could not afford to raise his voice, beat his fists on the table, to denounce discrimination in a heated way. If Barack Obama had denounced “systematic racism” as Joe Biden did a few weeks ago in front of Congress, all hell would have happened.
Above and below are two images of the squadron of African-American pilots who fought during the Second World War: they were called Tuskegee Airman, from the name of the town in Alabama where their base was located. Strongly supported by President Franklin Delano Roosvelt, they enlisted to fight against racial segregation. They drove fighter and bombing planes: they were recognizable because the tails of their aircraft were painted red (photo Getty Images)
June 15, 2021 (change June 15, 2021 | 08:10)
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