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That's not really why the study was conducted on African Americans. > The conception which lay behind the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee

That's not really why the study was conducted on African Americans. > The conception which lay behind the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee in 1932, in which 100% of its participants were poor, rural African-American men with very limited access to health information, reflects the racial attitudes in the U.S. at that time. The clinicians who led the study assumed that African-Americans were particularly susceptible to venereal diseases because of their race, and they assumed that the study's participants were not interested in receiving medical treatment.[4][45] > Taliaferro Clark said, "The rather low intelligence of the Negro population, depressed economic conditions, and the common promiscuous sex relations not only contribute to the spread of syphilis but the prevailing indifference with regards to treatment."[45] In reality, the promise of medical treatment, usually reserved only for emergencies among the rural black population of Macon County, Alabama, was what secured subjects' cooperation in the study.[4] I mean the other racist part was the fact that penicillin, which is still a standard treatment of syphilis today, was developed while the study was ongoing and yet there were still three more decades that it ran.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
>> Taliaferro Clark said, "The rather low intelligence of the Negro population, depressed economic conditions, and the common promiscuous sex relations not only contribute to the spread of syphilis but the prevailing indifference with regards to treatment."... This is a fairly sickening mindset. I hope I am never not sickened by it.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Strange. I have no problem reading it as a literal description with no bigotry or racism implied.
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    If it were about J.R.R. Tolkien's orcs, then I might agree. When basic observation disproves ¾ of your "literal description" about a racially-defined population… those "facts" probably didn't originate from honest mistakes. It's possible to be racist while using objective language: there's an entire Wikipedia article on scientific racism.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      What was the basic observation that disproves it? It was a statement about a specific group of people in a specific situation. I assume most of it was based in contemporary reality. You could probably say the same thing about other places today and be correct. I think the part that you're missing is that it wasn't a statement about blacks in general, but a particular community of incredibly poor people with zero education. syphilis was in fact rampant in that community, and I imagine that with zero access to healthcare or even detection, they were fairly fatalistic about it. People were more likely to have it than not have it by a huge margin.
      - wizzwizz4 2y ago
        You're asking me to provide a recorded observation, as evidence that the people recording "facts" didn't make observations. My theory (as stated) doesn't expect that evidence to exist! If this were debate club, that would be a foul. Fortunately for my ELO rating, they did make observations that contradicted their bigotry. Per the great-grandparent: >> In reality, the promise of medical treatment, usually reserved only for emergencies among the rural black population of Macon County, Alabama, was what secured subjects' cooperation in the study. (Racists always do this. Such comorbidities are part of why we have a special name for this special category of "being wrong".)
        s1artibartfast 2y ago
        >You're asking me to provide a recorded observation, as evidence that the people recording "facts" didn't make observations. My theory doesn't expect that evidence to exist! I Don't understand either if your statements. You said the characterization of Marcon County was obviously wrong, but say there's no possible evidence way they could have known this. >reality, the promise of medical treatment, usually reserved only for emergencies among the rural black population of Macon County, Alabama, was what secured subjects' cooperation in the study What are you trying to say here? Is this bad? They gave medical care to people who wouldn't have it otherwise. Getting Medical Care is a reason people of all Races enroll in clinical trials and it's still true today
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somenameforme 2y ago
In looking up more information on this topic in general. I came upon this [1] paper on the Tuskegee Study. It's an absolutely encyclopedic work that covers the historical context, parallel programs, and much more with an absurd level of detail and sources galore. So for instance I also thought that no subjects in Tuskegee received penicillin. It turns out this is incorrect and by 1952 27.5% had! [2] Another really interesting datum is that Georgia in 1945 started carrying out widespread syphilis testing, on the scale of hundreds of thousands of people, reaching 89% testing coverage in one local jurisdiction (which is where I assume Tuskegee was located). The interesting thing is that 30% of black individuals and 3% of white individuals tested positive for syphilis. People wouldn't have known the exact numbers back when this the Tuskegee study started (in 1932), but with such ridiculously high rates of infection, they'd have had a general idea. How do you think that would shape your views of a people when the Overton Window was wide open? Do you honestly think you'd still have been standing on a moral pedestal? This is why I think it's important to try to do more than just demonize the people involved. Because demonizing them isn't hard. They deserve it, and worse. But at the same time when we demonize them, it's so easy to miss the lessons to be learned because, after all, we aren't demons so surely we couldn't go down the same path again. Yet we almost certainly will if the only lesson we take away is 'don't be evil', because what we see as evil after the fact is not what people, good normal and "moral" people, perceive to be evil in the present. That's history in a nutshell after all. [1] - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/224795 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... [2] - https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0021968155901533 https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art... (gotta love 70 year old papers being paywalled...)

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago

>> Taliaferro Clark said, "The rather low intelligence of the Negro population, depressed economic conditions, and the common promiscuous sex relations not only contribute to the spread of syphilis but the prevailing indifference with regards to treatment."... This is a fairly sickening mindset. I hope I am never not sickened by it.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
Strange. I have no problem reading it as a literal description with no bigotry or racism implied.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  If it were about J.R.R. Tolkien's orcs, then I might agree. When basic observation disproves ¾ of your "literal description" about a racially-defined population… those "facts" probably didn't originate from honest mistakes. It's possible to be racist while using objective language: there's an entire Wikipedia article on scientific racism.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    What was the basic observation that disproves it? It was a statement about a specific group of people in a specific situation. I assume most of it was based in contemporary reality. You could probably say the same thing about other places today and be correct. I think the part that you're missing is that it wasn't a statement about blacks in general, but a particular community of incredibly poor people with zero education. syphilis was in fact rampant in that community, and I imagine that with zero access to healthcare or even detection, they were fairly fatalistic about it. People were more likely to have it than not have it by a huge margin.
    - wizzwizz4 2y ago
      You're asking me to provide a recorded observation, as evidence that the people recording "facts" didn't make observations. My theory (as stated) doesn't expect that evidence to exist! If this were debate club, that would be a foul. Fortunately for my ELO rating, they did make observations that contradicted their bigotry. Per the great-grandparent: >> In reality, the promise of medical treatment, usually reserved only for emergencies among the rural black population of Macon County, Alabama, was what secured subjects' cooperation in the study. (Racists always do this. Such comorbidities are part of why we have a special name for this special category of "being wrong".)
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        >You're asking me to provide a recorded observation, as evidence that the people recording "facts" didn't make observations. My theory doesn't expect that evidence to exist! I Don't understand either if your statements. You said the characterization of Marcon County was obviously wrong, but say there's no possible evidence way they could have known this. >reality, the promise of medical treatment, usually reserved only for emergencies among the rural black population of Macon County, Alabama, was what secured subjects' cooperation in the study What are you trying to say here? Is this bad? They gave medical care to people who wouldn't have it otherwise. Getting Medical Care is a reason people of all Races enroll in clinical trials and it's still true today
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deleted 2y ago

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somenameforme 2y ago

In looking up more information on this topic in general. I came upon this [1] paper on the Tuskegee Study. It's an absolutely encyclopedic work that covers the historical context, parallel programs, and much more with an absurd level of detail and sources galore. So for instance I also thought that no subjects in Tuskegee received penicillin. It turns out this is incorrect and by 1952 27.5% had! [2] Another really interesting datum is that Georgia in 1945 started carrying out widespread syphilis testing, on the scale of hundreds of thousands of people, reaching 89% testing coverage in one local jurisdiction (which is where I assume Tuskegee was located). The interesting thing is that 30% of black individuals and 3% of white individuals tested positive for syphilis. People wouldn't have known the exact numbers back when this the Tuskegee study started (in 1932), but with such ridiculously high rates of infection, they'd have had a general idea. How do you think that would shape your views of a people when the Overton Window was wide open? Do you honestly think you'd still have been standing on a moral pedestal? This is why I think it's important to try to do more than just demonize the people involved. Because demonizing them isn't hard. They deserve it, and worse. But at the same time when we demonize them, it's so easy to miss the lessons to be learned because, after all, we aren't demons so surely we couldn't go down the same path again. Yet we almost certainly will if the only lesson we take away is 'don't be evil', because what we see as evil after the fact is not what people, good normal and "moral" people, perceive to be evil in the present. That's history in a nutshell after all. [1] - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/224795 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... [2] - https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0021968155901533 https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art... (gotta love 70 year old papers being paywalled...)