19 ms·

Peter Buxtun, whistleblower who exposed Tuskegee syphilis study, has died

248 points by racional 2y ago

toomuchtodo 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Buxtun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Buxtun https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
rectang 2y ago
> Buxton himself could be self-effacing about his actions, saying he did not anticipate the vitriolic reaction of some health officials when he started questioning the study’s ethics. Humans relentlessly believe themselves to be just and righteous. To maintain that self-sense, they will gladly deceive themselves — and often much worse.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Yip, I think this is the main moral to be taken from this incident, and many like it. It's not like the people carrying out these experiments were just sadistic racists. They probably saw themselves as being able to, in the long run, save far more people and create a greater, safer, and healthier society for everybody, being able to eventually treat not only syphilis but any other disease which may manifest similarly. About the time somebody starts arguing that the ends justifies the means, something has probably gone wrong. Because the "ends" people envision quite rarely come to pass, yet the means of trying to pursue those ends do, with 100% certainty, happen. So most often you end up with all the evils, and none of the utopian justifications at the end of the road.
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    Sounds like a lot of startups.
  - max_ 2y ago
    I don't think a racist ever thought about themselves as racists. Racism is usually a notion of people having an explanation for why they behave towards another race. There are always explanations. I don't think there is any racist that doesn't have an explanation. For American slavery it was that "African Americans" are just animals, not human. So it made sense to use/teat them like donkeys or vermin. In Nazi Germany, the explanation was that Jews are veramin and so veramin needs to be exterminated. In South Africa it was a "scientific" theory they had called Holism [0] which basically described that everything should be kept in its place hence apartheid policies. In Gaza the explanation is religious i.e God have us land X, and this we need to cleanse the land of it's "invaders". Also, look at caste systems in India. They have explanations of why they do that. They don't see themselves as racist. The explanations still occur today using "statistics", "data", & "science" with stuff like IQ "research" & "race realism". "Racist" is something we project on people. But racists always think they actually have a Nobel or logical cause for thier activities. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism_and_Evolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism_and_Evolution
    - echoangle 2y ago
      What’s your definition of racism? White supremacists are certainly racist and would probably tell you that they are racist, too. That’s their whole message. Nazi Germany Leaders would probably have been ok with having been called racist, too. They were talking about being superior than other races all the time.
      - max_ 2y ago
        I think a black man declaring all white people evil vampires is racist. But we seldom call oppressed minorities racist. My definition of racism is the application racial stereotypes to individuals & groups
        b112 2y ago
        For me, it depends upon how the 'groups' part is applied. An example that seems sexist: women love shoes. However, this isn't sexist... it's simply statistically true. Where *isms come into play, where sexism occurs, is seeing the individual and then thinking "Ah, a woman... clearly she must love shoes". Applying group derived statistical fact to individuals is where racism, sexism occurs. Another example, black people in America show lower outcomes on IQ tests. There is a lot of debate as to why, whether it is genetic (an example, do Black people have less incidents of autism? Autism is often correlated with mental issues, but also conversely with higher test scores in some areas.) But really, it doesn't matter why. Whether it is genetic, whether it is cultural, or what. What matters is that we understand the group statistic exists, but that no matter what we do not simply apply such thought processes to the individual. After all, a few percentage in group testing has no basis for determining if the person in front of me is capable or not. I've met (as an example) some very unintelligent white people, and some very intelligent black people, a few percentage difference as a group is not relevant here. Yet if we pretend group differences don't exist, how can we possible try to fix it.. if it is cultural? Or worse, what if it is environmental, such as... poor nutrition which hurts brain development during youth? Such things can be fixed, yet if we pretend there is no difference, how can we try to fix it? So again, the primary must be to treat individuals as just that, and treat groups as just that, otherwise.. how are we being fair?
  - LanceH 2y ago
    > They probably saw themselves as being able to, in the long run, save far more people and create a greater, safer, and healthier society for everybody It's easy to view this as bad in this article's case, but nobody views their version of getting to play god when it comes to politics so long as their side is in charge. And the funny thing about this statement is how volatile a reaction it will get from both sides who think assume I'm supporting one or the other.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      > It's easy to view this as bad in this article's case, but nobody views their version of getting to play god when it comes to politics so long as their side is in charge This is just lazy rhetoric. Some political groups go murder crazy as soon as they gain power, while others don't. Obviously not everybody is equally bad as everybody else.
      - DFHippie 2y ago
        Yes, and the more you convince people that everyone is equally bad, the more you empower bad actors. If there is no profit in being good and there is profit in being bad, being good is for suckers. If everyone's a thief, you'd better start stealing. Otherwise you're just a victim.
        jonathanlydall 2y ago
        In fantasy arguments I have in my head about someone justifying their bad behaviour with “but everyone does it”, my reply would be, “most people I know don’t do it, so it’s definitely not everyone, just people like you”.
        DFHippie 2y ago
        "Everyone does it" translates to "I don't think I will suffer consequences from doing it". It's a justification based on self-interest, not ethics. It looks like they are applying a version of Kant's Categorical Imperative, which is roughly "what if everyone did it?" The justifier is saying everyone does do it and everything is fine. The proof is in the pudding. But as you say, if literally everyone did it, they wouldn't be having this conversation with you. So what they mean by "everyone" is "enough people that I'm safe".
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    > Because the "ends" people envision quite rarely come to pass, yet the means of trying to pursue those ends do, with 100% certainty, happen. So most often you end up with all the evils, and none of the utopian justifications at the end of the road. So what you basically say is that we should always follow the path of least evil at the current moment. It's strange to me to think that someone would say that this is indeed the optimal way to minimize evil.
- thephyber 2y ago
  In _Beyond the Curve_ a writer put it succinctly: > Nobody thinks they are the Ursula of their story. I think it is the human condition that our ego protects itself by denying truth in order to “protect” our psyche from acknowledging that we may have done something extremely morally compromising.
  - ImHereToVote 2y ago
    I wonder if Ursula von der Leyen thinks she is the Ursula of her story?
- neilv 2y ago
  That might be too generous. What if the vitriolic reaction was due to the threat of external repercussions from that information being revealed, rather than threat to internal self-image?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ImHereToVote 2y ago
  It's a good thing we don't have labs that do these amoral experiments currently. It's always by sheer luck that such atrocities always happen in the past.
- hiatus 2y ago
  We have known this for ages, hence the adage, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
yieldcrv 2y ago
[flagged]
- hermannj314 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    there is an entire category of comparisons that take specifically dissimilar things and highlight their similarities and Peter’s complaints were recognized for their similarity by Congressional hearings in that age, and the White House eventually
    - hermannj314 2y ago
      Can you give a specific example? The white house apologized and acknowledged Tuskegee, I did not read that they eventually recognized it was comparable to the holocaust. Did Clinton affirm that? Did he give a specific example how it was similar?
  - stephen_g 2y ago
    What you are saying is not what they are saying at all. Many of the Nazi medical experiments talked about were in the same ballpark of what was disclosed here. They occurred along with the euthanasia and genocide but weren't the euthanasia and genocide itself, they were different. As for your last sentence, of course not - it would fall under a completely different type of law that war crimes... I don't know if they were charged with anything but they should have been charged with crimes under US criminal law.
    - hermannj314 2y ago
      No one was ever criminally charged for Tuskegee. That is insane to me.
      - 2y ago
anitil 2y ago
For some context on the Tuskegee "experiment" I'd recommend the two-part series from "You're Wrong About" [0] [1]. Buxtun shows up in the second episode. What I hadn't remembered is that it was 6 years from when he first raised his concerns until they were taken seriously. [0] Part 1 https://open.spotify.com/episode/1CSuf2U9vM5sYru8RwsqFB https://open.spotify.com/episode/1CSuf2U9vM5sYru8RwsqFB [1] Part 2 https://open.spotify.com/episode/6GveYHXn6CdkHoGOZTYv0j https://open.spotify.com/episode/6GveYHXn6CdkHoGOZTYv0j Apologies for the spotify links, I couldn't find their hosted version
- astura 2y ago
  >Apologies for the spotify links, I couldn't find their hosted version They are right here: https://yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/1112270/5330092-tuskegee-syphilis-study-part-1-the-lie https://yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/1112270/5330092-tuske... https://yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/1112270/5418709-tuskegee-syphilis-study-part-2-the-truth https://yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/1112270/5418709-tuske...
  - anitil 2y ago
    Thankyou! I'm not sure how I missed them, I got to their website, clicked 'Episodes' expecting to see them, but missed the link to buzzsprout
- prettyStandard 2y ago
  I can second these episodes, and the podcast series in general. It's very informative about things that have been "misremembered". Other good series were the OJ Simpson trial, Monica Lewinsky, the Satanic Panic, and of course the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit. Just recently on Hacker News I saw someone making jokes about this lawsuit being spurious. Oh gosh, now I'm on a tangent. Rather than defend "this was not spurious" I'll just say that's how our legal system is set up. The legislative branch is not interested in making reasonable laws, and/or creating capable regulating bodies like most other modern countries. Your recourse here is to sue, hopefully there is an appropriate decision, and it's taken as precedent. Of course we've gone further in that direction in recent history.
hannob 2y ago
I had learned about this in the Pandemia podcast last year, unfortunately only available in German. But I thought for all the German-speaking HN readers I could share, it's worth listening to: https://superelektrik.de/pandemia/syphilis-geschichte-eines-grausamen-menschenversuchs/ https://superelektrik.de/pandemia/syphilis-geschichte-eines-... Pandemia is a podcast started during the Covid pandemic, but regularly covering all kinds of diseases and health issues.
SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
[flagged]
anal_reactor 2y ago
As non-American, it's a strange feeling to see all these discussions about racism. It took me a while to understand that the whole perception of the issue is just completely different.
- Swizec 2y ago
  I’ve lived here for ~10 years and I’m still learning. The base realization is that if you come from a mostly homogenous (or openly racist a la apartheid) background, you simply can’t understand how American style racism works. In my home country we have so few black and asian people that exact numbers can’t be reported in the census because it would be considered personal information. Sure we have racism but it’s purely of the “fear of new/unknown” kind. Anything more than that we learned from american media. A better analogy, if you come from such a background, might be to replace racism with ethnicism. We’re really good at ethnicism in Europe in a way that’s a lot more similar to how america does racism.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Swizec 2y ago
      Cartoons from the 1920’s and up to 1940’s are full of racist tropes like that And yes we watch those as kids at least in Europe because “all cartoons are for kids”
      - kjkjadksj 2y ago
        Not nearly as bad as what happened in Europe during the 1940s in terms of race relations that's for damn sure
  - graemep 2y ago
    Its not quite that. The US is also different from other countries with large non-white minorities. I think you are right that race, ethnicity and other things (such as caste) are much the same thing: you are classified by some group you are born into, and you and your descendants cannot move out of. However it is also different in every culture. It look me a long time to understand how the US is different from countries I know (which are definitely not homogenous, though some are fairly openly racist). I could see race was much more ingrained in the culture compared to the UK, but did not understand why. The insight for me (mostly thanks to Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste) is that race in American is a caste distinction: it is a hierarchy rather than just hostility to the outsider. I wrote a blog post on this: https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different
tokai 2y ago
Wonder why the US thought they needed to continue this experiment when they had access to the results and researchers of Unit 731[0], that did extensive research on syphilis. Kinda makes one think that the racial aspect was the point. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#American_grant_of_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#American_grant_of_imm...
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  As discussed elsewhere, one reason is that at the time Syphilis response was significantly different in Africans. Trials like this had been previously run on Europeans, and 731 would presumably include east Asians and ran for a handful of years, not decades. Unlike Unit 731, they didn't infect anyone and it was an observational study.
- burningChrome 2y ago
  >> Kinda makes one think that the racial aspect was the point. Interesting to note that the lowest C19 vaccine rates were in the African American communities. A lot of media outlets have speculated the primary reason for their vaccine hesitancy was this experiment and not trusting the government. In Tuskegee, Painful History Shadows Efforts To Vaccinate African Americans https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/967011614/in-tuskegee-painful-history-shadows-efforts-to-vaccinate-african-americans https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/967011614/in-tuskegee-painful...
  - throwup238 2y ago
    > A lot of media outlets have speculated the primary reason for their vaccine hesitancy was this experiment and not trusting the government. Combined with the much more recent incident in Pakistan where the CIA staged a fake hepatitis vaccine program to help locate Osama Bin Laden, leading to the resurgence of polio in the country. The US government just can't help itself in abusing vaccine programs for shady purposes.
nsjolj 2y ago
[flagged]

248 points by racional 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Buxtun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Buxtun https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

rectang 2y ago

> Buxton himself could be self-effacing about his actions, saying he did not anticipate the vitriolic reaction of some health officials when he started questioning the study’s ethics. Humans relentlessly believe themselves to be just and righteous. To maintain that self-sense, they will gladly deceive themselves — and often much worse.

somenameforme 2y ago
Yip, I think this is the main moral to be taken from this incident, and many like it. It's not like the people carrying out these experiments were just sadistic racists. They probably saw themselves as being able to, in the long run, save far more people and create a greater, safer, and healthier society for everybody, being able to eventually treat not only syphilis but any other disease which may manifest similarly. About the time somebody starts arguing that the ends justifies the means, something has probably gone wrong. Because the "ends" people envision quite rarely come to pass, yet the means of trying to pursue those ends do, with 100% certainty, happen. So most often you end up with all the evils, and none of the utopian justifications at the end of the road.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  Sounds like a lot of startups.
- max_ 2y ago
  I don't think a racist ever thought about themselves as racists. Racism is usually a notion of people having an explanation for why they behave towards another race. There are always explanations. I don't think there is any racist that doesn't have an explanation. For American slavery it was that "African Americans" are just animals, not human. So it made sense to use/teat them like donkeys or vermin. In Nazi Germany, the explanation was that Jews are veramin and so veramin needs to be exterminated. In South Africa it was a "scientific" theory they had called Holism [0] which basically described that everything should be kept in its place hence apartheid policies. In Gaza the explanation is religious i.e God have us land X, and this we need to cleanse the land of it's "invaders". Also, look at caste systems in India. They have explanations of why they do that. They don't see themselves as racist. The explanations still occur today using "statistics", "data", & "science" with stuff like IQ "research" & "race realism". "Racist" is something we project on people. But racists always think they actually have a Nobel or logical cause for thier activities. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism_and_Evolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism_and_Evolution
  - echoangle 2y ago
    What’s your definition of racism? White supremacists are certainly racist and would probably tell you that they are racist, too. That’s their whole message. Nazi Germany Leaders would probably have been ok with having been called racist, too. They were talking about being superior than other races all the time.
    - max_ 2y ago
      I think a black man declaring all white people evil vampires is racist. But we seldom call oppressed minorities racist. My definition of racism is the application racial stereotypes to individuals & groups
      - b112 2y ago
        For me, it depends upon how the 'groups' part is applied. An example that seems sexist: women love shoes. However, this isn't sexist... it's simply statistically true. Where *isms come into play, where sexism occurs, is seeing the individual and then thinking "Ah, a woman... clearly she must love shoes". Applying group derived statistical fact to individuals is where racism, sexism occurs. Another example, black people in America show lower outcomes on IQ tests. There is a lot of debate as to why, whether it is genetic (an example, do Black people have less incidents of autism? Autism is often correlated with mental issues, but also conversely with higher test scores in some areas.) But really, it doesn't matter why. Whether it is genetic, whether it is cultural, or what. What matters is that we understand the group statistic exists, but that no matter what we do not simply apply such thought processes to the individual. After all, a few percentage in group testing has no basis for determining if the person in front of me is capable or not. I've met (as an example) some very unintelligent white people, and some very intelligent black people, a few percentage difference as a group is not relevant here. Yet if we pretend group differences don't exist, how can we possible try to fix it.. if it is cultural? Or worse, what if it is environmental, such as... poor nutrition which hurts brain development during youth? Such things can be fixed, yet if we pretend there is no difference, how can we try to fix it? So again, the primary must be to treat individuals as just that, and treat groups as just that, otherwise.. how are we being fair?
- LanceH 2y ago
  > They probably saw themselves as being able to, in the long run, save far more people and create a greater, safer, and healthier society for everybody It's easy to view this as bad in this article's case, but nobody views their version of getting to play god when it comes to politics so long as their side is in charge. And the funny thing about this statement is how volatile a reaction it will get from both sides who think assume I'm supporting one or the other.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    > It's easy to view this as bad in this article's case, but nobody views their version of getting to play god when it comes to politics so long as their side is in charge This is just lazy rhetoric. Some political groups go murder crazy as soon as they gain power, while others don't. Obviously not everybody is equally bad as everybody else.
    - DFHippie 2y ago
      Yes, and the more you convince people that everyone is equally bad, the more you empower bad actors. If there is no profit in being good and there is profit in being bad, being good is for suckers. If everyone's a thief, you'd better start stealing. Otherwise you're just a victim.
      - jonathanlydall 2y ago
        In fantasy arguments I have in my head about someone justifying their bad behaviour with “but everyone does it”, my reply would be, “most people I know don’t do it, so it’s definitely not everyone, just people like you”.
        DFHippie 2y ago
        "Everyone does it" translates to "I don't think I will suffer consequences from doing it". It's a justification based on self-interest, not ethics. It looks like they are applying a version of Kant's Categorical Imperative, which is roughly "what if everyone did it?" The justifier is saying everyone does do it and everything is fine. The proof is in the pudding. But as you say, if literally everyone did it, they wouldn't be having this conversation with you. So what they mean by "everyone" is "enough people that I'm safe".
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  > Because the "ends" people envision quite rarely come to pass, yet the means of trying to pursue those ends do, with 100% certainty, happen. So most often you end up with all the evils, and none of the utopian justifications at the end of the road. So what you basically say is that we should always follow the path of least evil at the current moment. It's strange to me to think that someone would say that this is indeed the optimal way to minimize evil.
thephyber 2y ago
In _Beyond the Curve_ a writer put it succinctly: > Nobody thinks they are the Ursula of their story. I think it is the human condition that our ego protects itself by denying truth in order to “protect” our psyche from acknowledging that we may have done something extremely morally compromising.
- ImHereToVote 2y ago
  I wonder if Ursula von der Leyen thinks she is the Ursula of her story?
neilv 2y ago
That might be too generous. What if the vitriolic reaction was due to the threat of external repercussions from that information being revealed, rather than threat to internal self-image?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ImHereToVote 2y ago
It's a good thing we don't have labs that do these amoral experiments currently. It's always by sheer luck that such atrocities always happen in the past.
hiatus 2y ago
We have known this for ages, hence the adage, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

yieldcrv 2y ago

[flagged]

hermannj314 2y ago
[flagged]
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  there is an entire category of comparisons that take specifically dissimilar things and highlight their similarities and Peter’s complaints were recognized for their similarity by Congressional hearings in that age, and the White House eventually
  - hermannj314 2y ago
    Can you give a specific example? The white house apologized and acknowledged Tuskegee, I did not read that they eventually recognized it was comparable to the holocaust. Did Clinton affirm that? Did he give a specific example how it was similar?
- stephen_g 2y ago
  What you are saying is not what they are saying at all. Many of the Nazi medical experiments talked about were in the same ballpark of what was disclosed here. They occurred along with the euthanasia and genocide but weren't the euthanasia and genocide itself, they were different. As for your last sentence, of course not - it would fall under a completely different type of law that war crimes... I don't know if they were charged with anything but they should have been charged with crimes under US criminal law.
  - hermannj314 2y ago
    No one was ever criminally charged for Tuskegee. That is insane to me.
    - 2y ago

anitil 2y ago

For some context on the Tuskegee "experiment" I'd recommend the two-part series from "You're Wrong About" [0] [1]. Buxtun shows up in the second episode. What I hadn't remembered is that it was 6 years from when he first raised his concerns until they were taken seriously. [0] Part 1 https://open.spotify.com/episode/1CSuf2U9vM5sYru8RwsqFB https://open.spotify.com/episode/1CSuf2U9vM5sYru8RwsqFB [1] Part 2 https://open.spotify.com/episode/6GveYHXn6CdkHoGOZTYv0j https://open.spotify.com/episode/6GveYHXn6CdkHoGOZTYv0j Apologies for the spotify links, I couldn't find their hosted version

astura 2y ago
>Apologies for the spotify links, I couldn't find their hosted version They are right here: https://yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/1112270/5330092-tuskegee-syphilis-study-part-1-the-lie https://yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/1112270/5330092-tuske... https://yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/1112270/5418709-tuskegee-syphilis-study-part-2-the-truth https://yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/1112270/5418709-tuske...
- anitil 2y ago
  Thankyou! I'm not sure how I missed them, I got to their website, clicked 'Episodes' expecting to see them, but missed the link to buzzsprout
prettyStandard 2y ago
I can second these episodes, and the podcast series in general. It's very informative about things that have been "misremembered". Other good series were the OJ Simpson trial, Monica Lewinsky, the Satanic Panic, and of course the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit. Just recently on Hacker News I saw someone making jokes about this lawsuit being spurious. Oh gosh, now I'm on a tangent. Rather than defend "this was not spurious" I'll just say that's how our legal system is set up. The legislative branch is not interested in making reasonable laws, and/or creating capable regulating bodies like most other modern countries. Your recourse here is to sue, hopefully there is an appropriate decision, and it's taken as precedent. Of course we've gone further in that direction in recent history.

hannob 2y ago

I had learned about this in the Pandemia podcast last year, unfortunately only available in German. But I thought for all the German-speaking HN readers I could share, it's worth listening to: https://superelektrik.de/pandemia/syphilis-geschichte-eines-grausamen-menschenversuchs/ https://superelektrik.de/pandemia/syphilis-geschichte-eines-... Pandemia is a podcast started during the Covid pandemic, but regularly covering all kinds of diseases and health issues.

SuperNinKenDo 2y ago

[flagged]

anal_reactor 2y ago

As non-American, it's a strange feeling to see all these discussions about racism. It took me a while to understand that the whole perception of the issue is just completely different.

Swizec 2y ago
I’ve lived here for ~10 years and I’m still learning. The base realization is that if you come from a mostly homogenous (or openly racist a la apartheid) background, you simply can’t understand how American style racism works. In my home country we have so few black and asian people that exact numbers can’t be reported in the census because it would be considered personal information. Sure we have racism but it’s purely of the “fear of new/unknown” kind. Anything more than that we learned from american media. A better analogy, if you come from such a background, might be to replace racism with ethnicism. We’re really good at ethnicism in Europe in a way that’s a lot more similar to how america does racism.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Swizec 2y ago
    Cartoons from the 1920’s and up to 1940’s are full of racist tropes like that And yes we watch those as kids at least in Europe because “all cartoons are for kids”
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      Not nearly as bad as what happened in Europe during the 1940s in terms of race relations that's for damn sure
- graemep 2y ago
  Its not quite that. The US is also different from other countries with large non-white minorities. I think you are right that race, ethnicity and other things (such as caste) are much the same thing: you are classified by some group you are born into, and you and your descendants cannot move out of. However it is also different in every culture. It look me a long time to understand how the US is different from countries I know (which are definitely not homogenous, though some are fairly openly racist). I could see race was much more ingrained in the culture compared to the UK, but did not understand why. The insight for me (mostly thanks to Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste) is that race in American is a caste distinction: it is a hierarchy rather than just hostility to the outsider. I wrote a blog post on this: https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different

tokai 2y ago

Wonder why the US thought they needed to continue this experiment when they had access to the results and researchers of Unit 731[0], that did extensive research on syphilis. Kinda makes one think that the racial aspect was the point. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#American_grant_of_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#American_grant_of_imm...

s1artibartfast 2y ago
As discussed elsewhere, one reason is that at the time Syphilis response was significantly different in Africans. Trials like this had been previously run on Europeans, and 731 would presumably include east Asians and ran for a handful of years, not decades. Unlike Unit 731, they didn't infect anyone and it was an observational study.
burningChrome 2y ago
>> Kinda makes one think that the racial aspect was the point. Interesting to note that the lowest C19 vaccine rates were in the African American communities. A lot of media outlets have speculated the primary reason for their vaccine hesitancy was this experiment and not trusting the government. In Tuskegee, Painful History Shadows Efforts To Vaccinate African Americans https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/967011614/in-tuskegee-painful-history-shadows-efforts-to-vaccinate-african-americans https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/967011614/in-tuskegee-painful...
- throwup238 2y ago
  > A lot of media outlets have speculated the primary reason for their vaccine hesitancy was this experiment and not trusting the government. Combined with the much more recent incident in Pakistan where the CIA staged a fake hepatitis vaccine program to help locate Osama Bin Laden, leading to the resurgence of polio in the country. The US government just can't help itself in abusing vaccine programs for shady purposes.

nsjolj 2y ago

[flagged]