Corona Daily 244: The Tuskegee Experiment

Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden have offered to get vaccinated on live TV to inspire confidence in the COVID-19 vaccines. This is not new. In 1956, the Salk vaccine against polio had just been invented. Teenagers, vulnerable to the crippling disease, were reluctant or indifferent to getting a shot. To solve that problem, Elvis Presley took a Salk Polio vaccine jab on a popular TV show.

Last year, WHO listed ten major global health threats. They included climate change, cancer, HIV, a pandemic; also, “vaccine hesitancy” – distrust towards vaccines. Drugs are usually given to the ill, vaccines administered to healthy people. That makes the reluctance stronger. Scientific data suggests two to three million deaths are prevented every year due to vaccinations. If all people were to trust in vaccines, annually another 1.5 million deaths could have been prevented. Smallpox has been eradicated, and polio nearly extinct.

Usually, certain historical reasons exist for strong anti-vax feelings.

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In the Covid-19 pandemic, in the USA, a disproportionately large numbers of Blacks are infected, hospitalized and dead. As compared to Whites; Blacks (and Latinos) are hospitalized four times more, and dying three times more. Among the younger age groups, the difference is wider. It’s possible many African Americans work in front line and essential jobs, exposing themselves more. They have high rates of diabetes, hypertension and obesity. It is obvious the vaccines are necessary and will be more useful for the black community. And yet, for the vaccine trials across USA, only 3% of the people who signed up were black.

“I won’t be used as a guinea pig for white people.” One black man declared.

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In 1932, in the state of Alabama, the US Public Health Service started an experiment called TSUS (the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male). From the Tuskegee community, 600 poor black men were chosen. 399 of them had the sexually transmitted disease - syphilis. The control group had 201 men who were not infected. They were told the experiment would last for six months. In reality, it lasted for forty years, until 1972.

Those who ran the experiment, white men, wanted to see what course nature takes if the syphilis patients are not given any treatment. The black men were promised free medical care, but were never told about the diagnosis, nor the risk of infecting others, nor the fact that the disease could affect a variety of organs and lead to death. Participants were subjected to blood draws; spine taps and finally autopsies. They were told they were being treated for “bad blood”. Penicillin was available from 1947, and could have cured many of the infected men. The participants were never told about penicillin.

By 1972, only 74 subjects were still alive. Of the original 399 men, 28 had died of syphilis, 100 of related complications, 40 of their wives were infected, and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis.

The unethical and deadly forty-year experiment was one of the most appalling examples of medical exploitation.

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The other example is more recent. In 2011, to locate Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, the CIA ran a fake vaccination clinic. A Pakistani doctor announced a free hepatitis B vaccination campaign in Abbottabad. The real purpose was to see if a DNA sample could be obtained from anybody from Bin Laden’s family. The doctor is now serving a 33-year prison sentence.

Worse, the distrust in vaccinations grew. Islamist preachers and militant groups in Pakistan and Taliban suspect vaccination is a plot to kill or sterilize Muslims. Vaccinators are attacked and sometimes killed.

This is the key reason why polio now exists in only two countries – Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Ravi