Last week, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control, tweeted.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Tuskegee syphilis study. Tomorrow, I will be joined by colleagues & #PublicHealth leaders as we honor the 623 African American men, their suffering & sacrifice, and our commitment to ethical research and practice.
But, as one person, LawyerLady, pointed out on Twitter, they didn’t sacrifice; rather they were sacrificed. In other words they had no agency, no choice.
Recall what the Tuskegee experiment was. Actually, and at least a little ironically, the CDC itself does a nice job of laying out the horrific experiment. The CDC writes:
In 1932, the USPHS [United States Public Health Service], working with the Tuskegee Institute, began a study to record the natural history of syphilis. It was originally called the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” (now referred to as the “USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee”). The study initially involved 600 Black men – 399 with syphilis, 201 who did not have the disease. Participants’ informed consent was not collected. Researchers told the men they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term used to describe several ailments, including syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. In exchange for taking part in the study, the men received free medical exams, free meals, and burial insurance.
The CDC continues:
By 1943, penicillin was the treatment of choice for syphilis and becoming widely available, but the participants in the study were not offered treatment. (bold added.)
Then:
In 1972, an Associated Press story about the study was published. As a result, the Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs appointed an Ad Hoc Advisory Panel to review the study. The advisory panel concluded that the study was “ethically unjustified”; that is, the “results [were] disproportionately meager compared with known risks to human subjects involved.”
Good for them for concluding that it was ethically unjustified. Their reasoning about why, though, was seriously deficient. You need only read the above quotes to see 2 reasons why. First, the participants were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” which includes, but is not the same as, what they were being treated for: syphilis. Second, in 1943, once penicillin had become the treatment of choice. they were not offered it.
It might well be that the “results [were] disproportionately meager compared with known risks to human subjects involved.” But that wasn’t the key problem. The key problem is that the U.S. Public Health Service lied to the subjects and then withheld effective treatment.
The pic above is of ethically deficient Walensky.
READER COMMENTS
Monte
Dec 7 2022 at 8:56pm
The Guatemala Syphilis Project predated the Tuskegee study and was conducted clandestinely by the very same Dr. John Cutler at the behest of the U.S. Public Health Service with funding from the National Institutes of Health:
This and the politicization of public health through Covid was a blatant violation of the public trust, and no amount of virtue signaling by the “ethically deficient” Rachelle Walensky and the CDC (Cajole-Deceive-Coerce) is likely to restore that trust any time soon.
Monte
Dec 8 2022 at 12:52pm
But…who the hell cares! Certainly not the CDC. They’re being rewarded with a budget increase by the Biden administration:
Reform the CDC—Before Another Pandemic Hits
Greg Jaxon
Dec 7 2022 at 10:04pm
Populating a clinical trial of any kind is an elaborate and measured protocol in the ante-pandemic world of FDA Phase I, II, & III clinical testing. Every biotech investor understands the brutal economics that produced the broad field of expendible startup companies to pursue these studies and reward or ruin the science-gamblers who invested or dabbled there.
Then there was the Human Genome project maturing in the early 00s. Gene Therapy, as a biotech paradigm promised multi-Trillion $ payoffs for whomever could field a safe platform by which to deliver genetic code to in vivo human cells. The candidates had included stem cell transplantation, but it had disappointed. Other candidates were Adenovirus vectors and encapsulated modified-mRNA. Those platforms were ready for a Phase I trial showdown. But in reality it would be dozens and dozens of Phase I studies to tease out all the issues vs the myriad of human variation.
What was needed was an Emergency Use Authorization protocol to roll out an undertested sample application. Remember, there are TRILLIONS of future dollars in this technology. Far far more than the benefits of understanding advanced syphylis. The political economy of this event was (and will be again) irresistible. Its moral failing can only be addressed by another Nuremberg Trial and reaffirmation of its medical testing restrictions.
Ross Levatter
Dec 7 2022 at 10:31pm
Frankly I’m SHOCKED they managed to that past IRB.
Michael
Dec 8 2022 at 8:24pm
Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ was unjustly sentenced to death and executed, but also that he sacrificed himself.
I worked, for years, adjancent enough to clinical reasearch to be required to do various “research on human subjects” trainings, I assume mandated as a requirement to receive government funding. The truth of the Tuskeegee experiment – that the subjects weren’t told what disease they had, that they were told they were being treated when they weren’t, and that when a treatment was available they were denied it – was a core part of the trainings, along with more practical aspects like how to obtain informed consent properly, etc..
Jon Murphy
Dec 9 2022 at 7:44am
I don’t think that’s a particularly good counterpoint to the question David asks in the title. Christ, by virtue of the fact He is God made human, know of his impending betrayal and arrest. He could have taken steps to avoid it (and His diciplies encouraged him to). But He chose not to and went willingly to His crucifixtion.
The major problem with the Tuskegee Experiments is that the victims were not told (and, in fact, deliberately lied to).
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