(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Here's a comment on COVID-19 and the Tuskegee Experiment [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-28 This is a photograph of the US War Crimes Trial for the Nazi "doctors" in 1946. While these doctors were being held accountable for horrific medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners during World War II, US Public Health Service "doctors" were carrying out equally sadistic experiments on fellow Americans in Alabama. They had been doing so since 1932. They continued to do so -- despite this trial and others -- until 1972. And not one of these American doctors was held accountable. It's not hard for me to understand why African-Americans distrust doctors in general and the US Public Health Service in particular. One of the most depressing things about the COVID-19 crisis has been the refusal of numbers of African-Americans to take the various vaccines. It’s depressing to me because they are unlike the anti-vaxxers, who spout crackpot theories about COVID and the vaccine. The nutballs tell us that COVID is a regular flu, a minor irritant, or a conspiracy by the “Deep State” to enslave Christian Americans. They proclaim their refusal to get the vaccine on their Facebook accounts or Twitter feeds…until they or their loved ones catch COVID themselves. Suddenly these sneering “skeptics” beg “prayer warriors” to help them survive, and urge readers to get their vaccinations. In too many cases, it was too bloody late. No, the African-Americans come from a different perspective on receiving COVID-19 vaccinations, and it’s a good one. By now, every American with a good education should know about the horrors of the Tuskegee Experiment. For those of you who never heard of it, the Experiment was a syphilis research study that began in 1932 and continued for 40 years, ending in 1972. The US Public Health Service (USPHS) and Tuskegee Institute in Alabama thought it would be a jolly good idea to study the impact of untreated syphilis in African-American men. The “Negro Male” was the precise term. The Public Health Service offered 600 black men in Macon County, Alabama, aged 25 and up, free meals, health care, and burial stipends, but did not tell them precisely for what they were signing up. In other words, no informed consent. Of these men, 399 had syphilis, and 201 didn’t. Researchers said they were being treated for “bad blood,” a term used at the time for syphilis, among other ailments. Some men were given treatments available at the time, like arsenic and mercury, which had toxic impact. Others were given placebos, which led to horrible results: permanent organ damage, paralysis, blindness, severe mental illness, and even death. In 1947, penicillin, tested and proven in World War II, was available to treat syphilis, but was not offered to any of these poor guys. And that went on through the only the next 25 years of the study. The doctors, nurses, and medical technicians collecting data on this so-called research study regarded their subjects as subhuman. In the mid-1960s, a USPHS whistleblower named Peter Buxton complained about this program internally. He was ignored. So he leaked the documents in 1972 to an Associated Press reporter. This was at a time when the country was divided by Vietnam, just discovering Watergate, and people began to think their government was capable of anything. Like illegally bombing Cambodia. The worst part of the revelation was not the corrupt study itself – but that the men were not told they still had syphilis. So they were spreading it to their wives and lovers, who passed it genetically to their children. As the story broke in 1972, African-Americans were no longer taking white abuse like the fictional “Stepin Fetchit” of decades past. They filed a class-action lawsuit, and won a $10 million out-of-court settlement. Congress passed the National Research Act in 1974 to require informed consent for people to be used as human guinea pigs. The USPHS also created the Tuskegee Health Benefit Program to provide free medical care to survivors of the study and their immediate family members. About 100 participants died of late-stage syphilis, while others died from other conditions resulting from it. The last known survivor died in 2004. By that time, however, President Bill Clinton had formally apologized at the White House (in 1997). Five of the eight survivors sat on the White House lawn for the ceremony. I often wonder what they thought and felt at that event. The reason I write about this today is because I write about World War II and today is part of Black History Month. The Tuskegee Experiment is one of the most incredible horrors endured by African-Americans in a long history of enduring horrors in this nation. It’s clear that the USPHS didn’t care about who it studied, only what kind of results they would gain. The fact that human beings would needlessly suffer and die at their hands did not cross their minds for one moment. It was a racist attitude, pure and simple. Blacks were sub-humans on which to experiment. Admittedly, the 1930s were a time when universities still had “Chairs of Racial Hygiene,” interracial relationships (particularly black men and white women) were illegal, and Hitler and his racial views were widely admired. After all, he’d shut down the Communists, silenced the trade unions, restored the Reich economy, put on a good show at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and made the trains run on time. However, after the concentration camps were opened in 1945, the real truth of “racial hygiene” was laid bare, first in the stacked corpses at Belsen and Auschwitz. They were opened even more in the War Crimes Trials that followed, when even SS Obergruppenfuehrer Leonardo Conti, the Reich Health Leader, who was to stand trial for overseeing sadistic Nazi medical experiments in these camps, committed suicide rather than hold himself accountable for his crimes. And what crimes they were…freezing experiments on prisoners, ostensibly to help shot-down airmen cope with the North Sea…Dr. Fritz Mengele’s horrors inflicted on twins…air pressure tests…vivisection on live patients. None of these prisoners, being Jews headed for the gas chamber anyway, were given any opportunity to consent. They also sterilized prisoners, which led to Leon Uris mentioning one of the prisoner-doctors who performed the operations in his novel Exodus, which led to the doctor suing him, which led to another novel, QBVII, which led to a TV mini-series of the same name. Nice work if you can get it. In all the versions, the doctor won his case…and one Half-penny in damages, the smallest coin in the realm. That means: yeah, he damaged your reputation, but the reputation isn’t worth a full penny, fella. After V-E Day, the Americans put 20 doctors on trial, one of the second-degree trials after the big one, but still at Nuremberg. One of the doctors said the work was justified, as the “Jews were the festering appendix in the body of Europe.” Seven of them got the rope. Nine drew various terms, but all of those were released early. Seven were acquitted. Meanwhile, a continent away, Japan’s Unit 731, in Manchuria’s Harbin, performed similar experiments on both Chinese prisoners and Allied PoWs. They also tested out biological weapons there, which were then used in combat against the Chinese. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague killed at least 400,000 Chinese civilians. Oh, and they ordered infected prisoners and non-infected prisoners to have sex to study the impact of syphilis. Some of these so-called doctors avoided a deserved rope, because the Americans wanted their skills and results to fight the Cold War. So, now we’re in the postwar world. We’re in 1947 or 1948. Ghastly medical experiments on innocent human beings who gave no consent have been taking place for nearly two decades behind locked prison camps, undertaken by major industrial powers, Germany and Japan. Doctors who swore Hippocratic Oaths to “do no harm” have been doing just that. A good many of them have stood trial and been punished for their misdeeds. Some received the official necktie party. Has this stopped the Tuskegee torturers? No. Has this made them pause? No. Has this made them ask questions? No. They just go merrily along, for another quarter of a century. I often wonder what would have happened if someone had not exposed their shenanigans to the public. They would be doing it today. And today is where the problem is. Because the USPHS – and, therefore, the American medical establishment – lied through its teeth to these 600-plus African-Americans, the entire African-American community justifiably looks askance at promises by any medical doctor, nurse, or technician, who says, “I’m from the government, I’m here to help, and this vaccination will save you from COVID-19.” They can’t believe it. And I can believe why they believe it. The problem for me, as a white Anglo-Saxon Jew, who is from the government, is here to help, has taken the vaccine, is a simple one. How do I convince them to share my position? I’m up against 300 years of tyranny, racism, and humiliation that is still being inflicted on a daily basis, despite symbolic (Jackie Robinson and Mae Jemison) and actual (better hiring and college recruiting) efforts. I can’t compete with the cops who killed George Floyd, the men who dragged Matthew Byrd to his death (and bragged about it), the legislators who ordered separate drinking fountains, and antebellum planters who depended on unfed slaves to insure their own prosperity. Well, a simplistic answer is: I wasn’t there at the time and didn’t do any of those things, and wouldn’t do so. I’ve told people that if I ran a plantation, I would summon all the slaves to the front porch and say, “You are now all free employees of the Apple Wapple Corporation.” That’s a name my daughter used to put on her artwork as a little girl. “Starting tomorrow morning, you will all earn regular salaries plus Christmas bonuses. We will start rotating crops for better profit, all children will attend a school instead of working, and today we’ll inspect your housing complex to do upgrades. There will be no splitting up of families, and if anyone wants to be reunited with someone sold by my predecessor, let me know, and we’ll work to get that person back.” Then I pass out company ID cards, so that the pro-slavery patrollers in the area know that my troops are employees, not slaves, and can come and go when not working. We’d spend the rest of the day addressing the slave cabin issue, turning it into something closer to a better-run version of the “company town.” Also, my “company store” would not be a replacement form of slavery for these folks…it would offer the usual personal goods, but also the stuff company stores sell today, like coffee mugs. With a big sliced Apple Wapple logo on them. However, I don’t live in 1830. The same is true about many of the issues African-Americans face. You want to own a company? I’m as broke as you are. You want to be treated properly by both mall cops and real cops? I’m neither. You want improved hiring practices? I have zero input on hiring. Particularly over the “black tax.” You want to be taken seriously? Well, on that I can make a comment…if you’re hired to cook food at Burger King, don’t wear pants that expose your underwear. Yeah, it makes you look tough, but in that environment, it’s unsanitary. I saw that myself in Baltimore. Parenthetically, it was the single worst Burger King I ever visited. I went in at lunch for a two cheeseburgers and a side of fries and they had no burgers. “This IS a Burger King?” I asked the hapless young female cashier. She could only shrug. On the other hand, I can offer you two things. The first I’ve written about – being an Aspergian, I’m not irritated and bothered by differences in melanin content. I’ve said it before: to me, all people are “Field Marshal Montgomery.” So if you’re black, green, or chartreuse, more power to you. As a historian, I do like to know where you’re from (immediate history) and where your ancestors are buried (long-term history). Really? You’re one-fourth Seminole? That means one of your ancestors bailed out of a Georgia plantation and went Deep South to avoid recapture, and presumably met a Seminole woman and were fruitful and prospered. The second is being Jewish. Despite the lousy public relations work my Chasidic brethren do, when they come to Newark from Brooklyn to do an even lousier job of running their residential properties, I am extremely aware of the horrors inflicted on blacks. We were hammered, too. Often by the same people: white, European, Christians. You had slavery for 300 years in the United States. The Egyptians inflicted it on us. Read the Book of Exodus. Medieval Europe, the Spanish Inquisition (what a show!) the Tsars, and finally Hitler repeated the process. You had massive discrimination for 300 years in the United States. We had it in Europe pretty much until Napoleon in France and the British after that gave us our liberties. Even then, we suffered massive discrimination. Some Prussian regiments would not admit Jewish officers. The Bavarians were less choosy, which explains why Adolf Hitler’s List Regiment of 1914 had a Jewish commanding officer – who recommended him for an Iron Cross, believe it or not. In the United States, it was interesting: quotas on jobs and university admissions. Annapolis yearbooks with pages of Jewish graduates were perforated, so you could remove the unwanted Jew. Realtors barred Jews from developments. Hotels let guests know Jews were barred with ads that read, “No Hebrews or Consumptives Taken” or “Guests Taken to Church Free of Charge.” So I know all about quotas, the “black tax,” and redlining. I also know about the police being the enemy. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out, everything the Nazis did in Germany to their Jewish citizens was “legal” under the 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws. Jews could not complain to the police about the horrors of Kristallnacht. That was official policy. So was stripping Jews of their property, their homes, and then their lives. I also know about official and unofficial killers coming for Jews. The official variety were the medieval pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition, the Tsar’s pogroms, and the Holocaust. The unofficial ones were part of all of the above, and include that guy in Pittsburgh I will not name who thought it was a good idea to shoot up a synagogue. I also know about Jews being victims of sadistic medical experiments. Until 1940, my father’s family got regular letters in Yiddish from relatives in Poland. They stopped – forever – that year. We wondered why, but pretty much knew. We had our official answer in 1945. It goes without saying that they met horrific deaths. I have no idea if any were subjected to obscene medical experiments, but they could have been, and probably were. However, my knowing all that and understanding all that doesn’t change the essential equation. I don’t know what to say to African-American folks to help them overcome. All I can do is try. So I try every day, and I hope that if I can at least convince one African-American person that I’m “here from the government and trying to help,” then my life has been worthwhile. If one African-American person says to me, “You’re really a decent guy, trying to help me/us,” I’ll feel like I have accomplished something. There’s a Jewish saying, in the movie Schindler’s List: “He who saves one life, in time, saves the world entire.” It’s that hard…and that simple. Oh, and get that COVID-19 vaccine. It’s not that hard, either. 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