Tuskegee Tragedy

The year was 1932, the U. S. Public Health Service began a study on the treatment of Syphilis. They chose some 400 African American sharecroppers with whom they would study the progress of the disease without treatment. The men, who already had syphilis, were told they would receive free treatment for their disease. Instead they were NOT treated in order to determine whether the current treatments were possibly worse than not treating the disease. It seems horrifying that this would be done in our country, but that may reveal the true mindset of white America in 1932 as it pertains to black Americans.

As terrible and despicable as this experiment was, it needs to be pointed out that these men were NOT given syphilis by the study doctors, they already were infected. It also may need to be pointed out that penicillin was not to be tested or marketed for treatment of any diseases for another ten years. So for at least the first decade of this terrible study the known cure was NOT being withheld. This does not speak to the following 30 years of the study, nor does it in any way reduce the tragedy and horror of this terrible and bigoted experiment.

I share these facts in light of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's use of the Tuskegee experiment by the USPHS to show that today the US government is very capable of being responsible for creating and distributing HIV/AIDS into the African American community. As disgusting as Tuskegee was, it did not involve infecting people with disease, and of course did not involve the government creating syphilis! Rev. Wright's example also completely ignores our nation's moral shift in how it thinks about and treats African Americans since the days of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement! Need I point out that it is our government that has put up the funding for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, and has spent billions of dollars to bring that treatment free of charge to the poorest in Africa, thanks to President Bush!