5 ms·

Here is a study that gives a completely encyclopedic coverage of the context, data, and knowledge of the time. [1] If you're at all interested in this topic, I'

Here is a study that gives a completely encyclopedic coverage of the context, data, and knowledge of the time. [1] If you're at all interested in this topic, I'd strongly encourage checking it out. It is the most extensively informative paper, on any topic, that I have ever seen, by far. I have no idea how many years the author spent collecting the data he presents there but it was clearly a labor of love. For some relevant points: in Georgia, they carried out widescale syphilis testing, on the scale of hundreds of thousands in 1945. Counties adjacent to Tuskegee reached 89% test coverage, with the outcome being an infection rate of 30% in black individuals and 3% in white individuals. Of course people wouldn't have known the exact numbers back when the Tuskegee study started in 1932, but with such ridiculously high rates of infection, they'd have had a generally accurate idea. It's also accurate that the majority of those who were infected had not proactively sought out medical treatment. That knowledge is part of what led Georgia to mandate the blood tests and pair it alongside recommendations of treatment for those infected. How do you think you would have framed these data at the time with a wide open Overton Window, no notions of political correctness, and so on? To be clear, as always, I am not defending the Tuskegee experiment, the people who did it, their views, or anything of the sort. They did awful things, obviously. But what I am trying to show is that if we were in their shoes, in the same situation, in the same context, it would have been all too easy to fall into the exact same trappings. It's only by really understanding the past that we might ever try to hope to avoid repeating it. When we simply demonize the past, the only lesson to be learned is don't be a demon. And certainly none of us think ourselves demons, so surely such things could never happen again. But with that mindset, they most assuredly will! [1] - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/224795 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

rectang 2y ago
> To be clear, as always, I am not defending the Tuskegee experiment, the people who did it, their views, or anything of the sort. But it looks to me as though you are tirelessly excusing the researchers and spending many hours starting from the conclusion that there was nothing racist about what went on at Tuskegee and then reasoning backwards. All humans are capable of racist actions, but some uphold the moral duty to fight against that tendency more conscientiously than others.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Having logical, or indeed even sympathetic, reasons for doing bad things does not excuse doing bad things. This is the entire point, and how history should be studied, because it emphasizes the underlying lessons to be learned. In this thread every attempt to paint the researchers as evil racists is relatively easy to factually rebuke. And it's because they weren't. They easily could have been you or I. And this is why it's so important to study history and actually try to genuinely understand the perspective of bad individuals. Basically the entirety of evils in human history is people saying 'Okay, I know I'm doing bad things. But I'm a good person and I have very good, exceptional, reasons for doing these bad things. And once this is over we'll have a much better world for everybody, so it's okay in this instance.' And a lot of the times, the logic and rhetoric used is appealing. This is why it's so absolutely important to understand it, study it, and endeavor to never fall into such rationalization ever again. Because after all is said and done, this grand utopia we envision at the end will likely never come to pass, or anything even like it - whether or not we succeed, yet all of these evils done in the name of the pursuit of such absolutely do come to pass.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    I think I see the confusion. We're saying that "racist" is a useful description of a type of human thought / behaviour. You seem to think it's a demonising invocation of Godwin's Law that's incompatible with empathy. One level more meta, though: if, as a society, we treat racist behaviour as inexcusable, that makes it less likely to occur. Treating racists as "reasonable, but mistaken" is actually in the neo-Nazi playbook. (I understand the impulse, though: I used to do it myself, until I realised that I was making up historical "facts" in order to justify the attitudes of racists. I really don't want to believe that some people are bad people… but racism is a choice, a habit; not a mere mistake about the facts. Ignoring that legitimises it.)
    - somenameforme 2y ago

rectang 2y ago

> To be clear, as always, I am not defending the Tuskegee experiment, the people who did it, their views, or anything of the sort. But it looks to me as though you are tirelessly excusing the researchers and spending many hours starting from the conclusion that there was nothing racist about what went on at Tuskegee and then reasoning backwards. All humans are capable of racist actions, but some uphold the moral duty to fight against that tendency more conscientiously than others.

somenameforme 2y ago
Having logical, or indeed even sympathetic, reasons for doing bad things does not excuse doing bad things. This is the entire point, and how history should be studied, because it emphasizes the underlying lessons to be learned. In this thread every attempt to paint the researchers as evil racists is relatively easy to factually rebuke. And it's because they weren't. They easily could have been you or I. And this is why it's so important to study history and actually try to genuinely understand the perspective of bad individuals. Basically the entirety of evils in human history is people saying 'Okay, I know I'm doing bad things. But I'm a good person and I have very good, exceptional, reasons for doing these bad things. And once this is over we'll have a much better world for everybody, so it's okay in this instance.' And a lot of the times, the logic and rhetoric used is appealing. This is why it's so absolutely important to understand it, study it, and endeavor to never fall into such rationalization ever again. Because after all is said and done, this grand utopia we envision at the end will likely never come to pass, or anything even like it - whether or not we succeed, yet all of these evils done in the name of the pursuit of such absolutely do come to pass.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  I think I see the confusion. We're saying that "racist" is a useful description of a type of human thought / behaviour. You seem to think it's a demonising invocation of Godwin's Law that's incompatible with empathy. One level more meta, though: if, as a society, we treat racist behaviour as inexcusable, that makes it less likely to occur. Treating racists as "reasonable, but mistaken" is actually in the neo-Nazi playbook. (I understand the impulse, though: I used to do it myself, until I realised that I was making up historical "facts" in order to justify the attitudes of racists. I really don't want to believe that some people are bad people… but racism is a choice, a habit; not a mere mistake about the facts. Ignoring that legitimises it.)
  - somenameforme 2y ago