The United States Government did something that was wrong deeply profoundly, morally, wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment of integrity and equality for all citizens clearly racist, President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the remaning survivors, May 16,1997.

For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S Public Health Service (PHS} conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the last stage of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of it's seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for "bad blood" their doctor's had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all.

The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopisies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenrate under the ravages of teritiary syphilis, which can include tumors, heart desease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. "As I see it" one of the doctor's involved explain, we have no further interest in these patients until they die"

Very interesting yet not surprising... I remember as a child in Jamaica when the foreign doctors and nurses came to give us medical services like injections...hmmm makes me wonder at times what was their true motive

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There Is A Time & Place For Everything!!!

Using Human Beings as Laboratory Animals:

The true nature of the experiment had to be kept from the subject to ensure their cooperation. The sharecropper's grossly disadvantaged a lot in life made them easy to manipulate. Please at the prospect of free medical care, almost none of them had ever seen a doctor before, these unsophisticated and trusting men became pawns in what James Jones author of the excellent history on the subject, Bad Blood, identified as the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history.

The study was meant to discover how syphilis affected blacks as oppose to whites, the theory being that whites experienced more neurological complications from syphilis where is blacks were more susceptible to cardiovascular damage.

How this knowledge would change clinical tretment of syphilis is uncertain. Although the PHS touted study as one of great scientific merit, from the outset it's actually benefits were hazy. It took almost forty years before someone involved in the study took a hard and honest look at the end results, reporting that "nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syhpilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling veneral diseases in the United States".

When the experiment was brought to the attention of the media in 1972, news anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that "used human beings a laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of How Long it takes Syphilis to Kill Someone.

A Heavy Price in the Name of Bad Science:

By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been effected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis. How has these men been induced to endure a fatal disease in the name of science?

To persuade the communtiy to support the experiment, one of the doctor's admitted it "wasnecessry to carry on this study under the guise of a demonstration and provide treatment. At first, the men were prescribe the syphilis remedies of the day, bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury, but in such small amounts that only 3 percent showed any improvement.

These token doeses of medicine were good public relations and did not interfere with the true aims of study. Eventually, all syphilis treatment was replace with "pink medicine"--aspirin. To enure the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangeous spinal tap, the PHS mislead them with a letter full of promotional hype.

"Last Chance for Special Free Treatment" The fact tht autopies would eventually be required was also conceled. As a doctor explained, "If the colored population becomes aware that that accepting fee hosptial care means a past mortem,every darky will leave Macon County.

"Even the Surgeon Gereral of the United States participated in enticing the men to remain in the experiment, sending them ceritificates of appreciation after 25 years in the study.

Following Doctor's Orders:

It takes little imagination to ascribe racist attitudes to the White Government Officials who ran the experient, but what can one make of the numberous African Americans who collaborated with them?

Ther experiments name comes from the Tuskegee Institute, the Black University founded by Booker T. Washington. It's affiliated hospital lent the PHS it's medical facilities for the study, and other predominately black institutions as well as local black doctors also partiscipated.

A black nurse name Eunice Rivers, was central fiqure in the experiment for most of it's 40 years. The promise of recognition by a presigious government agency may have obscuredthe troubling aspects of the study for some.

A Tuskegee doctor, for example, praise "the educational advantages offered our interns and nurses as well as added standing it will give the hospital. "Nurse Rivers" explained her role a one of passive obedience, "we were taught that we never diagnosed, we never prescribe, we followed the doctor's instructions"!

It is clear that the men in the experiment trusted her and that she sincerely cared about their well being, but her unquestioning submission to authority eclipsed her moral judgement. Even after, she genuinely felt nothing ethical had been amiss.

One of the most chilling aspects of the experiment was how zealously the PHS kept these men from receivingtreatment. When several nationwide compaigns to eradicate vereral disease came to Macon County, the men were prevented from participating.

Even when penicillin was discovered in the 1940s, the first real cure for shphilis, the Tuskegee men were diliberately denied the mediction. During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have PHS to exempt them.

Please at their success, the PHS representative annouced, So far we are keeping the known positive patients from getting the treatment. "The experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943) a Public Health Law requiring testing and treatment for Vereral disease and in spite of the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which specified that "Informed Consent" was needed for experiment inolving human beings...

Please read my last and final part coming up soon in which you may find, very interesting....

I can feel the hateraide flowing through my veins.......

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The final Page:

On July 23, 1973 Fred Grey, a pominent civil rights lawyer, brought a $1.8 billion class acion civil suit aganist many of those instutions and individual's involved in the study. Grey demands $3 million in damages for each living participant and the heirs of the deceased. The case never came to trial.

In December, 1974, the government agreed to $10 million out of court settlement. The living paticipants each received $37,500 in damages, thier heirs of the deceased, $15,000. Grey received nearly $1 million in legal fees.

One survivor said..."I don't know what they used us for, I ain't never understood the study." In 1900's 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 possiblility that this might be true.

As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched. Who would imagine the government all the way up to The Surgeon Gereral of the United States, deliberately allowing a group of it's citizens to die from a terrible disease for the sake of an ill conceived experiment?

There are similar practices going on today in the case of aids, as I went on to further study these horrible acts involving Aids Experiments on Children....my next topic

Yeah I remember those experiences despite been quite young, I still do have a scar to prove that they were infact here. I am glad to say that after some 20 odd years I am still in good health.

Back to the point, why does gov't take so much liberties against their people in one way or another, what was the motive behind this Tuskegee Conspiracy. Clinton wtf were u thinking?

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