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Tony Norman: Comparing the Tuskegee Experiment to our current COVID crisis
TONY NORMAN
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Columnist
tnorman@post-gazette.com
AUG 3, 2021 7:58 AM
My barber is a sensible guy. While trimming my beard recently, our conversation hit upon the intersection of his business interests and the community?s health ? vaccine hesitancy.
Since we?re both vaccinated, the conversation was mostly about folks who elected to take their chances trying to outrun the remorseless and unsentimental delta variant.
Even as we discussed the overwhelming logic for getting the vaccine, there were still differences in perspective between us. I got the vaccine early on as soon as my doctor was able to arrange it.
My barber got his shot only after ruminating on the pros and cons of whether he should do it. He was a part of a later wave of those who needed to be persuaded before he was comfortable enough to do it. The fact that the vaccinations are still pending FDA approval really bothered him. It infuriates me, too. There?s no excuse for this bureaucratic lag, especially when folks interpret it as a negative vote against vaccination.
Still, lack of FDA approval or long-term studies didn?t dissuade him from doing the right thing for his family, his livelihood and the community he loves.
I asked my barber what the most common excuse he heard from his Black clientele whenever he brought up the efficacy of vaccines.
?Tuskegee,? he said. ?That, and not knowing what?s in the vaccine.? It shouldn?t surprise anyone that the Black community is disproportionately susceptible to conspiracy theories and anti-science propaganda given how many decades this country?s medical system has marginalized people of color with indifference, malpractice and active hostility.
Black bodies have been experimented on since arriving in this hemisphere on slave ships. Black women were often subjected to harrowing medical procedures before those same birthing and gynecological procedures were refined enough to use on white women. In earlier eras of American history. Black suffering provided the equivalent of today?s FDA stamp of approval.
Ironically, the high infant mortality rate for Blacks in Pittsburgh has not been lost on those who consider the lack of empathetic gynecological and obstetrics care in a region being fought over by two medical conglomerates an obvious violation of the Hippocratic oath and every other moral standard.
All this is to say that there really are sound reasons for a sense of skepticism about the intentions of the for-profit medical industrial complex, it?s ugly cousin Big Pharma (hello, opioid crisis) and the continuing prevalence of doctors who still believe, contrary to all scientific evidence to the contrary, that Blacks have a higher threshold for pain than whites or any other group.
Coming into contact with such a system can be both horrifying and humiliating depending on factors as arbitrary as skin color.
Having said this, casually resorting to blaming the Tuskegee experiment for one?s self-defeating and potentially fatal vaccine hesitancy during a pandemic that is killing people across the globe by the millions is the laziest dodge imaginable.
The Tuskegee experiment is the infamous medical study of the impact of untreated venereal disease on 600 Black men that began in 1932 and ended in 1972 when it was exposed. The experiment was conducted by medical doctors who told the men ? 399 with syphilis and another 201 who were disease free ? that they were being treated for something they called ?bad blood.?
Every doctor participating in the study knew that the placebos and mineral supplements they were administering to the men was less than useless, especially when penicillin was identified as an effective cure for the disease as early as 1947.
So dozens of Black men suffered severe medical consequences, including blindness, insanity, excruciating pain and, ultimately, death even after it was treatable with antibiotics and penicillin.
The doctors wanted to keep the experiment going even as the disease spread in the communities where the men who were treated like expendable guinea pigs lived. They wanted to see how VD would impact a large community if left untreated.
Of course, the wives and girlfriends of the infected men became unknowing spreaders of the disease. It was a medical and moral catastrophe that would?ve continued long into the ?70s and beyond until every participant was dead if not for it being exposed by the Associated Press on a tip provided by an ethical doctor.
What?s interesting about this exceptionally sordid piece of American history is what happened once the callous abuse of community trust and betrayal of the Hippocratic oath was exposed.
Black men who had gone untreated for decades and those who had been untreated for a very short time didn?t display any of the vaccine hesitancy that has become the default excuse of folks who just don?t want to be vaccinated against COVID-19 under any circumstance today.
You can bet that even as fury mounted in Alabama and across the country in 1972 as word of the Tuskegee experiment got out, the men most affected by a sadistic medical establishment wanted to be fully cured of the disease that afflicted them and that had been treatable for decades.
There was no vaccine hesitancy if you were the person who howled in pain every time you urinated. When you looked at the bloody toilet bowl, you desperately wanted whatever promised to cure you immediately. Vaccine hesitancy was not an option.
If a regimen of penicillin shots could end your pain and suffering within days and weeks, you took it, unless the disease had already driven you insane. There was no such thing as vaccine hesitancy despite the fact that doctors had betrayed their most sacred trust to ?do no harm? for decades. Whether you were a Tuskegee sharecropper or a school teacher, you rolled up your sleeve for the sake of your life, your loved ones and your community?s health.
Today, the parallels are just as stark if not as graphic. If you are not vaccinated and exposed to the virus, there?s a good chance you will catch the delta variant. Whether it kills you or not is dependent upon the quality of medical care you receive and the absence or presence of comorbidities.
The medical establishment is no longer under the control of the kind of amoral sadists who were running things more than two generations ago, but institutional attitudes change slowly. Doctors aren?t omnipotent or even necessarily moral in their conduct or practices. Doctors should be held accountable for their individual behavior, not the sins of the profession in the past. Likewise, sage advice to be vaccinated against a virus that wants to kill you shouldn?t be dismissed automatically because of politics or a suspicious fear of the unknown.
Think of the Tuskegee men who gladly accepted the penicillin shots in 1972 and the following years to rid themselves of a dreaded, painful disease. They knew it was a cure that worked and had worked for millions of people for more than two decades.
The COVID-19 vaccine doesn?t have that pedigree, but there is overwhelming proof that it works. The current outbreak is among the unvaccinated. It is going to kill a lot of people who will have second thoughts about the wisdom of refusing the shot as they take their last, painful breath.
If you?re Black, you should listen to your barber and learn from your long, dark, painful history. If someone offers you a shot of penicillin in the form of a vaccine, take it. Otherwise, you're just conducting a Tuskegee experiment on yourself.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or Twitter @Tony_NormanPG.
First Published August 3, 2021, 12:00am
Tony Norman: Comparing the Tuskegee Experiment to our current COVID crisis
TONY NORMAN
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Columnist
tnorman@post-gazette.com
AUG 3, 2021 7:58 AM
My barber is a sensible guy. While trimming my beard recently, our conversation hit upon the intersection of his business interests and the community?s health ? vaccine hesitancy.
Since we?re both vaccinated, the conversation was mostly about folks who elected to take their chances trying to outrun the remorseless and unsentimental delta variant.
Even as we discussed the overwhelming logic for getting the vaccine, there were still differences in perspective between us. I got the vaccine early on as soon as my doctor was able to arrange it.
My barber got his shot only after ruminating on the pros and cons of whether he should do it. He was a part of a later wave of those who needed to be persuaded before he was comfortable enough to do it. The fact that the vaccinations are still pending FDA approval really bothered him. It infuriates me, too. There?s no excuse for this bureaucratic lag, especially when folks interpret it as a negative vote against vaccination.
Still, lack of FDA approval or long-term studies didn?t dissuade him from doing the right thing for his family, his livelihood and the community he loves.
I asked my barber what the most common excuse he heard from his Black clientele whenever he brought up the efficacy of vaccines.
?Tuskegee,? he said. ?That, and not knowing what?s in the vaccine.? It shouldn?t surprise anyone that the Black community is disproportionately susceptible to conspiracy theories and anti-science propaganda given how many decades this country?s medical system has marginalized people of color with indifference, malpractice and active hostility.
Black bodies have been experimented on since arriving in this hemisphere on slave ships. Black women were often subjected to harrowing medical procedures before those same birthing and gynecological procedures were refined enough to use on white women. In earlier eras of American history. Black suffering provided the equivalent of today?s FDA stamp of approval.
Ironically, the high infant mortality rate for Blacks in Pittsburgh has not been lost on those who consider the lack of empathetic gynecological and obstetrics care in a region being fought over by two medical conglomerates an obvious violation of the Hippocratic oath and every other moral standard.
All this is to say that there really are sound reasons for a sense of skepticism about the intentions of the for-profit medical industrial complex, it?s ugly cousin Big Pharma (hello, opioid crisis) and the continuing prevalence of doctors who still believe, contrary to all scientific evidence to the contrary, that Blacks have a higher threshold for pain than whites or any other group.
Coming into contact with such a system can be both horrifying and humiliating depending on factors as arbitrary as skin color.
Having said this, casually resorting to blaming the Tuskegee experiment for one?s self-defeating and potentially fatal vaccine hesitancy during a pandemic that is killing people across the globe by the millions is the laziest dodge imaginable.
The Tuskegee experiment is the infamous medical study of the impact of untreated venereal disease on 600 Black men that began in 1932 and ended in 1972 when it was exposed. The experiment was conducted by medical doctors who told the men ? 399 with syphilis and another 201 who were disease free ? that they were being treated for something they called ?bad blood.?
Every doctor participating in the study knew that the placebos and mineral supplements they were administering to the men was less than useless, especially when penicillin was identified as an effective cure for the disease as early as 1947.
So dozens of Black men suffered severe medical consequences, including blindness, insanity, excruciating pain and, ultimately, death even after it was treatable with antibiotics and penicillin.
The doctors wanted to keep the experiment going even as the disease spread in the communities where the men who were treated like expendable guinea pigs lived. They wanted to see how VD would impact a large community if left untreated.
Of course, the wives and girlfriends of the infected men became unknowing spreaders of the disease. It was a medical and moral catastrophe that would?ve continued long into the ?70s and beyond until every participant was dead if not for it being exposed by the Associated Press on a tip provided by an ethical doctor.
What?s interesting about this exceptionally sordid piece of American history is what happened once the callous abuse of community trust and betrayal of the Hippocratic oath was exposed.
Black men who had gone untreated for decades and those who had been untreated for a very short time didn?t display any of the vaccine hesitancy that has become the default excuse of folks who just don?t want to be vaccinated against COVID-19 under any circumstance today.
You can bet that even as fury mounted in Alabama and across the country in 1972 as word of the Tuskegee experiment got out, the men most affected by a sadistic medical establishment wanted to be fully cured of the disease that afflicted them and that had been treatable for decades.
There was no vaccine hesitancy if you were the person who howled in pain every time you urinated. When you looked at the bloody toilet bowl, you desperately wanted whatever promised to cure you immediately. Vaccine hesitancy was not an option.
If a regimen of penicillin shots could end your pain and suffering within days and weeks, you took it, unless the disease had already driven you insane. There was no such thing as vaccine hesitancy despite the fact that doctors had betrayed their most sacred trust to ?do no harm? for decades. Whether you were a Tuskegee sharecropper or a school teacher, you rolled up your sleeve for the sake of your life, your loved ones and your community?s health.
Today, the parallels are just as stark if not as graphic. If you are not vaccinated and exposed to the virus, there?s a good chance you will catch the delta variant. Whether it kills you or not is dependent upon the quality of medical care you receive and the absence or presence of comorbidities.
The medical establishment is no longer under the control of the kind of amoral sadists who were running things more than two generations ago, but institutional attitudes change slowly. Doctors aren?t omnipotent or even necessarily moral in their conduct or practices. Doctors should be held accountable for their individual behavior, not the sins of the profession in the past. Likewise, sage advice to be vaccinated against a virus that wants to kill you shouldn?t be dismissed automatically because of politics or a suspicious fear of the unknown.
Think of the Tuskegee men who gladly accepted the penicillin shots in 1972 and the following years to rid themselves of a dreaded, painful disease. They knew it was a cure that worked and had worked for millions of people for more than two decades.
The COVID-19 vaccine doesn?t have that pedigree, but there is overwhelming proof that it works. The current outbreak is among the unvaccinated. It is going to kill a lot of people who will have second thoughts about the wisdom of refusing the shot as they take their last, painful breath.
If you?re Black, you should listen to your barber and learn from your long, dark, painful history. If someone offers you a shot of penicillin in the form of a vaccine, take it. Otherwise, you're just conducting a Tuskegee experiment on yourself.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or Twitter @Tony_NormanPG.
First Published August 3, 2021, 12:00am
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