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May 2, 2008

The Truth About Tuskegee And The Lie Of Black Left-wing Paranoia

Topics: Political News and commentaries

"Based on this Tuskegee experiment ... I believe our government is capable of doing anything." - Rev. Jeremiah Wright when asked if he stood by his claim that "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.

The problem with what Wright says, is simply that it's not true:

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.

Continue reading: Jonah Goldberg - Tall Tales About Tuskegee

Posted by Abdul at May 2, 2008 10:07 AM

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