Posted on 05/02/2008 5:22:24 PM PDT by neverdem
The Pitiless Health Service had no brain, no heart nor shame once penicillin was a recognized treatment, IMHO.
The medical establishment doesn’t care. Anything powerless - from elderly poor black men to unborn babies - is fair game for experimentation.
It used to be fairly common to use patients in mental hospitals and prison inmates (regardless of color - the point of the Tuskeegee experiment was to find out if blacks, specifically, reacted differently from whites) for experimental studies. So when people complain about government restrictions on medical studies, remember...there’s a reason for those restrictions.
It was called "the solid South" for a reason. Odds favored them being the party of "the little guy."
Who's the medical establishment? That's a pretty broad brush.
So, do we need to know any more about what an entirely government-run medical-care system would be like?
There are many wildly inaccurate assertions about this experiment.
“The Pitiless Health Service had no brain, no heart nor shame once penicillin was a recognized treatment, IMHO.”
They also hadn’t figured out how to treat anaphylactic shock
which was a fear at that time. Folks could be allergic to it.
Sickening and shameful.
I agree neverdem—this assessment seems a little harsh. my wife recently went through a procedure and I was impressed with the handling and the compassion of the medical staff.
Tuskegee was not, however, proof of widespread white racism. Once the "racist white society" learned of this horror, they responded with the appropriate outrage and closed the program. A racist society would have responded with "So what? They were only blacks."
Jeremiah Wright says that the Tuskegee victims were deliberately infected by the U.S. Government. Anything to encourage the bigots in his congregation to keep hating whitey.
I'm trying to figure out if the experiment lasted for 40years how long were these people in "late stage syphillis"?
Let's suppose for a minute AIDS was created to wipe out Blacks. They've known about it for 25 years now and still they participate in behavior that spreads the disease.
Now, tell me again whose fault it is?
Ah yes..the good doctors, the good lawyers, the good judges....
“The medical establishment doesn’t care.”
Excuse me.......I had a team of very good, intelligent, caring and talented folks of the medical community save my life last year.
I was given 6 months to live and so far, I’m 6 months and 2 days past the pull date.
Let me be the first to say - FDR’s fault!
How could they determine if there were any differences without doing a parallel study using white males? AFAIK, that was never done.
IIRC, the US Army used soldiers as guinea pigs to test the effects of atomic/nuclear radiation during the 40-50’s. There was no separation of the soldiers due to race or rank during these tests, conducted in Nevada deserts. Tuskegee is a sad experiment, but I do not think it is any worse than taking healthy men, soldiers, (no women and mostly WHITE) and seeing how they reacted to radiation. Similarly, my next door neighbor showed me scars on his arm where mustard gas was placed to demonstrate its effect on exposed skin. He is white and experienced this during his Army days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplessis_Orphans
Be warned. If you've never heard of the Duplessis Orphans, it may be a life-changing experience. You may thereafter wonder if the "normal" view of the world is correct; you may start to think twice about dismissing some people derisively as nutjobs or conspiracy theorists. The above link to the wiki is just a stub; there's much more online and the thread to other connections in Canada and the US is quite disturbing.
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