Blacks 'Injected' With Syphilis? Never Happened
One peculiar footnote of the Jeremiah Wright controversy has been the repetition -- by educated black men on national television -- of a stubborn myth. That the U.S. government "injected black men with syphilis."
Rev. Wright said from the pulpit, in a video clip shown on Fox News: "The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment! They purposely infected African-American men with syphilis!"
Wright is wrong. That's not what the Tuskegee experiment was.
In the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male," federal researchers refused to treat a group of black men who already had syphilis, long after a cure had been found.
Instead, doctors treated these men like laboratory animals, studying the course of the disease over decades.
The Tuskegee experiment was the most shameful episode in the history of the U.S. Public Health Service. President Bill Clinton apologized on behalf of the nation in 1997.
But the government did not infect black men with syphilis.
To invoke the Tuskegee experiment to suggest that the government invented AIDS to kill black people, as Rev. Wright did... that dishonors the truth. There is no excuse for it. It must stop.
Yet here's what Obery Hendricks, a professor at New York Theological Seminary, said on "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday night in defense of Rev. Wright: "We do know the government injected black men with syphilis."
On "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on Tuesday, journalist Ed Gordon said it's "not so far-fetched" to suppose that AIDS is weapon of genocide... considering that "the government was giving syphilis to black men."
Likewise, CNN contributor Roland Martin said last Friday: "I was watching another channel where they played a sermon where [Rev. Wright] said that America infected African-American men with
syphilis, called the Tuskegee experiment. That actually did, indeed, happen."
No. It. Did. Not.
And the only reason Obery Hendricks, Ed Gordon and Roland Martin weren't humiliated on national television is because Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews and Anderson Cooper are more ignorant about black history than they are.
I can't believe that none of those well-educated black gentlemen has read the highly praised book "Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment." Or seen the HBO movie "Miss Evers' Boys."
I recommend they do so before popping off again in public about the Tuskegee experiment. Same goes for Jeremiah Wright.
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Interesting column. The crime is still horrible even if the researchers didn't infect the black men with Syphillis. I would like to see a trial for any surviving researchers.
With that said, I guess you get to read all of the comments from those that can't understand the difference between taking advantage of a horrible situation and causing it. Then you'll get the calls to prove a negative since some still won't believe black men weren't infected despite no facts saying otherwise.
when factually correct, an argument carries more weight. mis state the facts for emotional effect, credibility suffers.
Malarkey. The researchers knew that syphilis was communicable. Thus, by not informing infected men of their infection, and allowing said infected men to infect others, the Tuskegee researchers did, in fact, purposefully and willfully infect Blacks with syphilis. Your logic is fallacious, and your argument is pointless. If you really want people to honor history, you should really try to not lie by omission or incompetence.
People always wonder why we can't have a serious discussion about race in America. What's your next post? Here's an idea:
"The Nazi's Only Killed 5,999,900 Jews, Not the Full 6 Million Claimed." I bet that'll go even better than this one.
I hope you reread your comments and saw the grammatical error of your ways! Observation of the problem may have been despicable, and it was! But that is absolutely not the same as deliberate infection, as I'm sure you can see.
Semper fi
okay, somebody gets shot in the leg and hobbles into the nearest store, asks someone to call 911. everyone can see that the wound, although potentially fatal if left untreated, could easily be tended to if that 911 call is made and medical techs arrive.
everyone knows this, but despite the store being full of people with working cell phones and there being a bank of pay phones outside the store, no one calls and they all just stand there and watch the person bleed to death. furthermore, let's say that there are people in the store who take out their phones and try to call, but are all convinced not to.
let's call the store the Mills Tuskegee Bullsh-t Bazaar.
the fact that nobody in that store shot that person but instead let the person die is no less egregious than the actual crime committed -- it's just a passive version of murder.
so, as angry as the family will be at the person who actually did the shooting, they will be OUTRAGED at the fact that all those people let their loved one die when it didn't have to happen.
tyranny prevails when good people do nothing.
i've reread my comments, and i stand by them. what you and Mills seem to also be saying, though you don't seem to realize it, is that in some way these men dying horrific, fully-preventable deaths is in a tangential sense excusable because they walked in sick.
semper fi. reread THAT.
Again, semantics and parsing. We don't know if men were injected with syphilis, as eyewitnesses who are unethical are not reliable. Still, that particular is academic. The point which you and other apologists keep missing is that these men were not made aware of their conditions and allowed to spread syphilis to their wives, lovers, and then unborn children. Who holds ultimate responsibility for those victims? I know that if had syphilis and gave it to you, and then you found out that my doctor knew and then did nothing, we'd both be receiving a large sum of money from said doctor.
So, re-read my post. And while you're looking at my bad grammar, don't forget to read the substance of what I actually wrote.
thank you Micah...i was just about to make the same point.
while they may not have injected the men directly - and who's to say in sooth what they really did, given that what is on record is so Goddamned heinous - these unknowingly infected men had sex with their unknowing wives, who then contracted syphillis and passed it on to their children, who were born with CONGENITAL syphillis.
you're being a semanticist, parsing ASS, Mr. Mills. THREE GENERATIONS OF PEOPLE'S HEALTH AND LIVES RUINED and you're basically arguing over a "j" instead of an "f".
"The Gov. didn't inject black people with syphilis".
It is a difference.
It's no less repugnant though and those involved that are still alive should be charged.
With that said, if you're quoting facts then quote facts. Don't make stuff up or embellish the story.
Jeremiah Wright is a public figure with followers and if he wants credibility he's not going to get it by making a story a little bit worse after each telling.
How's this work for you?
The 6 black youths in Jena beat a white kid to the ground and then kicked him in the head.
The 6 black youths in Jena beat a white kid in the head with baseball bats.
The 6 black youths in Jena tied a white kids hands behind his back, beat him with bats and stabbed him .
The 6 black youths in Jena tied a white kids hands behind his back, beat him with bats, stabbed him and then set him on fire.
Do you see how credibility suffers when making up 'Facts?'
What does it matter whether the government injected them with the disease or not. The point is it turned these people into lab rats. The crime is the same.
If it doesn't matter, then why not accept the truth?
Hyperbole does not make evil worse.
Thanks for the enlightenment about our TV standards David, but reminding us that the government isn't so bad as to literally inject syphilis or AIDS into it's people isn't means for celebration. Okay, Pastor Wright took some liberties since the HIV rate is so high in Blacks. You're probably right about syphilis, but your guess is about as good as his on HIV.
So let me get this straight. The U.S. didn't inject syphyllus into black men. Instead they treated them like laboratory animals by experimenting on them?
BIG DIFFERENCE. Could you please tell me where my outrage levels should be? Should I be :
A. A Lot
B. A Liitle
C. Not al All
outraged over these facts?
Thank you.
I don't disagree that you should be outraged, but at whom? And, doesn't the passage of time and the difference in how we perceive each other mitigate your outrage? Wright was almost as outrageous when he libeled the modern US with his charges of deliberate infection of HIV, which I thought had pretty well seen as originating in Africa.
Semper fi
Semper FI back at you Devil Dog.
In 1990, a survey found that 10 percent of African Americans believed that the U.S. government created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks, and another 20 percent could not rule out the possibility that this might be true. As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally far fetched. Who could imagine the government, all the way up to the Surgeon General of the United States, deliberately allowing a group of its citizens to die from a terrible disease for the sake of an ill-conceived experiment? In light of this and many other shameful episodes in our history, African Americans' widespread mistrust of the government and white society in general should not be a surprise to anyone.
If you have proof that it didn't happen prove it, you can't because you don't. YOU are a lie in the grunt. It happened another BS lie from a hater.
Wildcat,
Mills is absolutely correct - this is all well-known history and documented repeatedly (see, for instance, http://www
I don't really see much moral difference between infecting a person with a disease and purposely not telling them they had one in order to watch them die - either way, it's still murder.
As ex-candidate Mike Huckabee pointed out, preachers often get carried away in the moment and say things that don't look as good in print the next day.
Put another way - church is not a good source for facts.
"... church is not a good source for facts."
Nor are the cable news nets, apparently. ;^)
There is no moral difference. There is a factual difference. When you are a public figure or a leader you are expected to get your facts straight. Making a horrible crime sound even worse for your political gain does not make you a believable leader.
No, the author makes a good point.
Even with a terrible crime like the Holocaust or Tuskeegee Experiment or Indian Wars, even as we make our outrage known we have to be accurate. It was irresponsible and cruel not to treat the men affected, perhaps even led to some spreading, but it was not "injecting" them with the disease. It was just as bad, but even so be accurate or you give racists a weapon to use against us with fence sitters. That's what Holocaust deniers do--take one or two stories that have inconsistencies and claim that undercuts the larger whole.
The truth is enough, don't embellish it. The exact, ACCURATE truth is the greatest weapon against evil.
Well said
Mills is right...an
Unfortunately, tragically, disgustingly, the US Govt. has done (and IS doing) some pretty sick things,things that would make Hitler look like Chuck Woolery ,and they aren't done yet (Iraq/depleted uranium) . That's why when stories get twisted,pu
I suggest you all read a book "The Plutonium Files" . If you don't believe that our government would do something to people in order to examine them, this book, well researched, will change your mind.
I can't say the government injected the Tuskegee blacks, but I can say that if they did not properly care for them, and used them as lab specimens, they are pretty bad.
all i gotta say is MKULTRA
This type of morality is disgusting in the extreme and reminds me of the Nazis. My family suffered at the hands of the Nazis, fought the Nazis, and knew that this type of artificial legalistic argument was the Nazis specialty.
There is absolutely no difference in concealing an easily curable disease and than giving it to them in the first place. In fact, concealment is much more horrific as you are condemning a person to long cruel mental and physical suffering finally resulting in an agonizing death.
How shameless, depraved, and vile.
No, the government did NOT inject people with syphilis as you point out. This is a commonly confused by both Blacks and Whites.
But what the government DID do by purposely LYING to the people and telling them they were getting treatment for free for "bad blood" is only a sliver less worse. When penicillin was widely available and considered the standard of care across the country, these men were denied this treatment. They were not even told that such a treatment existed and that by not receiving it, they were effectively signing over their lives. This exploitation and misuse of trust went on for forty years.
As mentioned in the excellent book you site, "Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment", participants in the study, could not seek treatment elsewhere, where they might have learned about the true nature of their illness, or risk terminating their participation in the study.
Also, the men went on to infect their wives and children with syphilis (kind of an indirect injection of syphilis by the government, wouldn't you say?) Certainly not what a government should be doing to its citizens. And certainly enough to prompt the rampant mistrust of Blacks of a government that would not only allow such an experiment to go on for forty years, but be responsible for orchestrating.
Who could forget the vice-presidential debate when Gwen Ifill brought up the issue of AIDS in the U.S. and posed this question to the candidates: “I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts. What should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?”
Cheney’s response? “…I have not heard those numbers with respect to African-American women. I was not aware that it was – that they're in epidemic there. . .”
Huh?
Although I do not believe that the government created HIV with the intent of destroying a group of people, knowing the history of the government, it is clearly not as ridiculous as some might have you believe that a group of people with historically unequal availability to adequate healthcare might come to such a conclusion.
To this group of people the semantics are irrelevant.
The horror! Myths have been spread in churches in America... and some are more quetionable than others. (or, some feel they have a right to question, it seems) Whose myths are the correct ones? Isn't there some logical problem with proving a negative?
"I can prove it didn't happen."
No, you can't. You can prove something did happen, but not the other way around. That, is myth making. Was Jesus black? If you take the catholic church's word that the Shroud of Turin is genuine, tell me that man in the image is Joe Scarborough?
Even physicists will tell you that the concept of reality is not objective. We're into uncertainty and dimensions at this point. It's possible that all things are true and false simultaneously. (which is what the Bhuddists have been saying for a few thousand years.)
But, most important in all this... what right do any of us have to judge another man's faith? It's so... UN-AMERICAN. (at least, it used to be)
Are we to become THE UNITED CHURCHES OF AMERICA?
Obama-Webb '08
Who's judging whose faith? I'm judging their command of the facts. Don't the facts matter?
The question is whose facts, how many facts, in what order, and for what purpose. If you are led to observe only part of reality, what is the use of facts? But, I think you miss my point, entirely, which is probably my fault. I'm a shitty writer.
Try the following:
From "Gore Vidal Speaks Seriously Ill of the Dead" (his eulogy of Bill Buckley):
"The habit of lying is now a national style that started with “news” magazines that was further developed by pathological liars that proved to be “good” Entertainment on TV. But a diet of poison that has done none of us any good.
I speak ex cathedra [as if i'm the Pope] now, ad urbe et orbe, (to Rome and the world) with a warning that no society so marinated in falsity can long survive in a real world."
(the latin is a dig at Bill Buckley's pretence of using latin to sound "educated")
http://www
Or, Thomas Edsall's interview with Walter Pincus:
"While seeking to "be neutral, unbiased and objective, presenting both or all sides as if they were on the sidelines refereeing a game," the print and electronic media have relegated themselves to the role of "common carriers, transmitters of other people's ideas and thoughts, irrespective of import, relevance and at times even accuracy," Pincus contends."
http://www
This sounds about as close to the type of "experiments" Nazi doctors did on Jews and other "inferior" peoples in the 1930's and 40's. After the war, those doctors who were captured and brought to trial were infamous for mincing their words in the most incredible ways. "We never injected them with rabis. We simply allowed rabid animals to bite them."
How odd. Isn't this exactly the type of moral relativism conservatives are always ranting about?
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