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Did you ... Did you just try and. use MK Ultra and Operation Sea-Spray to claim the Tuskegee experiments weren't racist? :o Systemic racism in medical research

Did you ... Did you just try and. use MK Ultra and Operation Sea-Spray to claim the Tuskegee experiments weren't racist? :o Systemic racism in medical research cannot be justified by comparing it to other unethical experiments... Really would have thought that was obvious? Also, even the analogies are terribly flawed. The Oslo experiments involved retrospective examination of medical records and autopsies, not the withholding of treatment. And Tuskegee victims were not informed of the real nature of the study - a clear ethical violation which disproportionately targeted a vulnerable racial group.

somenameforme 2y ago
That is not what happened in Oslo. This is the lead paragraph of the abstract of the paper from it: ---- Nowhere in the world is there a more unique opportunity to learn what happens when early syphilis goes untreated than from the files of Boeck of Oslo, Norway. His scientific conviction as to the inadequacies of the specific treatment of the day led him to withhold treatment from approximately 2,000 patients with primary and secondary syphilis during the twenty-year period, 1891–1910. Community protection from infection was aided by the hospitalization of these patients until all traces of the disease had disappeared (from 1 to 12 months, average 3.6 months). In 1929, his successor, E. Bruusgaard, reported on a follow-up study of 473 of these patients and provided information on the outcome of untreated syphilis, which has formed the basis for prognostic statements on syphilis for more than twenty-five years. ---- In Oslo the patients were both hospitalized and then had treatment withheld. His successor then carried out a retrospective study on what happened. It's unclear what the patients were told, but I suspect it was not 'We're going to hospitalize you for months, but not treat you.'
- mandmandam 2y ago
  This is a side-point, quite apart from the fact that you claimed Tuskegee wasn't racist because MK-ULTRA also affected white people. I really hope you think that one over, because it's a truly horrid and utterly indefensible take. And you're still very wrong on this side-point, because from 1891 to 1910, there was no known effective treatment for syphilis. Whereas during Tuskegee (1932-1972), penicillin was both widely available for most of that time and known to be effective. I don't know why you're making these awful comparisons, but I'm interested how you formed these views. Did you hear these arguments on a podcast somewhere, or are they your own? ... And why on Earth would you think Peter Buxtun's death was the appropriate time to bring them up??
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    When one looks at history, it's like we're on a loop. And I think a big part of that is because we fail to ever "really" learn from the past. And I think one part of that is demonizing the past with labels, instead of actually trying to understand what really happened and why. Because when we overly demonize things it makes it impossible to imagine any reasonable person, let alone ourselves, ever engaging in anything even remotely awful - 'it could never happen again.' But of course it will, and it won't just be "evil" people doing it. So to your post here - you're again factually mistaken. There were indeed numerous treatments for syphilis in the 19th century, as the paper specifically mentions treatment being withheld should have clued you into. These treatments had significant side effects, but such is often the nature of medicine. What would you think of a doctor that intentionally withheld chemo or other similarly dangerous treatments to thousands of cancer patients, to instead observe what happened to them absent treatment? That is what happened in Norway, and again I'm sure the doctor had the best of intentions, presumably he was working to develop a more effective treatment. If you have any factual or logical arguments I'm more than happy to hear them, and indeed perhaps there is something I am not considering. But I find the appeals to emotion and bias mixed with a healthy helping of ad hominem and straw man quite silly, and I will not engage with that.
    - mandmandam 2y ago
      The guy claiming the Tuskegee experiments weren't racist is also now claiming the moral high ground. I'm out.
b112 2y ago
It's not clear to me if people in this thread are differentiating between "certain categories of humans have specific genetic vulnerabilities" and "we're going to be racist without logical or researched cause". It actually hurts people to not take into account their genetic background, an example is sickle cell anemia, which originates primarily in black people, who have a family tree from Africa. Why? Well, even though it causes severe issues, it also protects from malaria parasites! There was an evolutionary derived pressure to spread this in that population group. And, during covid this caused additional problems for those with sickle cell. It also highlighted how Italians, most specifically those in Sicily have a strong likelihood of having sickle cell, primarily due to the endless, centuries long Roman occupation of Africa. Women and men are physically different, and have different issues to account for (osteoporosis a great example here). Men often have too much iron, where as women too little. Treating everyone the same would mean not treating anyone correctly. So, yes.. there are racial and sexual differences to take into account during studies, and medical treatments. As with everything, the true way to behave is often neither extreme. No one should be mistreated during treatment, and treatments should not be racist... while understanding that racism isn't "different genetic groups of humans are predispositioned for certain conditions".
- mandmandam 2y ago
  No one is saying that all people are genetically the same. No one is arguing that sayig "different genetic groups of humans are predispositioned for certain conditions"is racist, or that medical treatment needs to ignore biological differences. What is being claimed by OP is that since atrocities were also inflicted on white people during unethical medical experiments such as MK ULTRA, withholding known treatment from a specific racial group in Tuskegee without their consent can't be called racism (which is so absurd that maybe that's where you got confused?). Hope that clears things up for you.

somenameforme 2y ago

That is not what happened in Oslo. This is the lead paragraph of the abstract of the paper from it: ---- Nowhere in the world is there a more unique opportunity to learn what happens when early syphilis goes untreated than from the files of Boeck of Oslo, Norway. His scientific conviction as to the inadequacies of the specific treatment of the day led him to withhold treatment from approximately 2,000 patients with primary and secondary syphilis during the twenty-year period, 1891–1910. Community protection from infection was aided by the hospitalization of these patients until all traces of the disease had disappeared (from 1 to 12 months, average 3.6 months). In 1929, his successor, E. Bruusgaard, reported on a follow-up study of 473 of these patients and provided information on the outcome of untreated syphilis, which has formed the basis for prognostic statements on syphilis for more than twenty-five years. ---- In Oslo the patients were both hospitalized and then had treatment withheld. His successor then carried out a retrospective study on what happened. It's unclear what the patients were told, but I suspect it was not 'We're going to hospitalize you for months, but not treat you.'

mandmandam 2y ago
This is a side-point, quite apart from the fact that you claimed Tuskegee wasn't racist because MK-ULTRA also affected white people. I really hope you think that one over, because it's a truly horrid and utterly indefensible take. And you're still very wrong on this side-point, because from 1891 to 1910, there was no known effective treatment for syphilis. Whereas during Tuskegee (1932-1972), penicillin was both widely available for most of that time and known to be effective. I don't know why you're making these awful comparisons, but I'm interested how you formed these views. Did you hear these arguments on a podcast somewhere, or are they your own? ... And why on Earth would you think Peter Buxtun's death was the appropriate time to bring them up??
- somenameforme 2y ago
  When one looks at history, it's like we're on a loop. And I think a big part of that is because we fail to ever "really" learn from the past. And I think one part of that is demonizing the past with labels, instead of actually trying to understand what really happened and why. Because when we overly demonize things it makes it impossible to imagine any reasonable person, let alone ourselves, ever engaging in anything even remotely awful - 'it could never happen again.' But of course it will, and it won't just be "evil" people doing it. So to your post here - you're again factually mistaken. There were indeed numerous treatments for syphilis in the 19th century, as the paper specifically mentions treatment being withheld should have clued you into. These treatments had significant side effects, but such is often the nature of medicine. What would you think of a doctor that intentionally withheld chemo or other similarly dangerous treatments to thousands of cancer patients, to instead observe what happened to them absent treatment? That is what happened in Norway, and again I'm sure the doctor had the best of intentions, presumably he was working to develop a more effective treatment. If you have any factual or logical arguments I'm more than happy to hear them, and indeed perhaps there is something I am not considering. But I find the appeals to emotion and bias mixed with a healthy helping of ad hominem and straw man quite silly, and I will not engage with that.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    The guy claiming the Tuskegee experiments weren't racist is also now claiming the moral high ground. I'm out.

b112 2y ago

It's not clear to me if people in this thread are differentiating between "certain categories of humans have specific genetic vulnerabilities" and "we're going to be racist without logical or researched cause". It actually hurts people to not take into account their genetic background, an example is sickle cell anemia, which originates primarily in black people, who have a family tree from Africa. Why? Well, even though it causes severe issues, it also protects from malaria parasites! There was an evolutionary derived pressure to spread this in that population group. And, during covid this caused additional problems for those with sickle cell. It also highlighted how Italians, most specifically those in Sicily have a strong likelihood of having sickle cell, primarily due to the endless, centuries long Roman occupation of Africa. Women and men are physically different, and have different issues to account for (osteoporosis a great example here). Men often have too much iron, where as women too little. Treating everyone the same would mean not treating anyone correctly. So, yes.. there are racial and sexual differences to take into account during studies, and medical treatments. As with everything, the true way to behave is often neither extreme. No one should be mistreated during treatment, and treatments should not be racist... while understanding that racism isn't "different genetic groups of humans are predispositioned for certain conditions".

mandmandam 2y ago
No one is saying that all people are genetically the same. No one is arguing that sayig "different genetic groups of humans are predispositioned for certain conditions"is racist, or that medical treatment needs to ignore biological differences. What is being claimed by OP is that since atrocities were also inflicted on white people during unethical medical experiments such as MK ULTRA, withholding known treatment from a specific racial group in Tuskegee without their consent can't be called racism (which is so absurd that maybe that's where you got confused?). Hope that clears things up for you.