I am not an anti-vaxxer. I have received all the scheduled vaccinations (Mumps, Measles, Hepatitis B, Tetanus, et al.), as have my children. I recognize the seriousness of COVID-19 and that a vaccine is needed to restore any sense of normalcy to the nation. There are people out there, including many Black people, who harbor doubts about the vaccine, and their fears are understandable.
The history of the United States Government and vaccinations of people of color is deplorable and goes far beyond the Tuskegee Study, which many people have heard of but are unfamiliar with how heinous the government’s actions were. From 1932–1972, the U.S. Public Health Service embarked on a study of syphilis by withholding a vaccine from a group of Black men, many unaware they had the disease, to see what would happen. They not only withheld treatment, watching them suffer and die. They said and did nothing as the men passed the disease along to their family members and others, often leading to their deaths as well. The Tuskegee Study became relatively well known after whistleblower Peter Buxton revealed the experiment to the Washington Star newspaper in 1972. You rarely hear that this was neither the first nor the last study of this government’s type.
In 1943, at the Federal Correctional Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana, the government injected 241 men with gonorrhea so that treatments could be studied as to their effectiveness. The men were offered $100, a certificate of merit, and a letter in their file for their parole board hearings. After several months, the study was concluded in 1944 because injecting men in their penises proved an unreliable passing along the disease. There is no information available as to the racial make-up of the Indiana subjects as opposed to the black ones in Tuskegee; one can’t help but wonder?
In September 2011, a report titled “ETHICALLY IMPOSSIBLE” STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 was released. The following is from the preface:
On October 1, 2010, President Barack Obama telephoned President Álvaro Colom of Guatemala to apologize to Guatemala’s people for medical research supported by the United States and conducted in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948. Some of the research involved deliberate infection of people with sexually transmitted diseases (“STDs”)1 without their consent. Subjects were exposed to syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid, and included prisoners, soldiers from several parts of the army, patients in a state-run psychiatric hospital, and commercial sex workers. Serology experiments that did not involve intentional exposure to infection, which continued through 1953, were also performed in these groups and with children from state-run schools, an orphanage, and several rural towns. President Obama expressed “deep regret” for the research and affirmed the U.S. government’s “unwavering commitment to ensure that all human medical studies conducted today meet exacting” standards for the protection of human subjects.
While the United States expressed “deep regret,” it later declared itself not liable for these tests conducted outside the United States. Guatemalans were not entitled to the $10 million the remaining participants and heirs of the Tuskegee Experiment got. They didn’t get the $100 the Terre Haute prisoners got. The United States of America said Guatemalans were entitled to nothing at all. Judge Reggie Walton said he was following Federal law but was deeply troubled by the study. He urged the government to assist the affected.
“This lawsuit is simply not the appropriate vehicle for remedying those wrongs.”
Lawyers representing the Guatemalans are now seeking redress against private companies involved and in January 2019, a Federal Court declared that the Rockefeller Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and related entities, and Bristol-Myers who they describe as, “the driving force” behind the study. Several of the doctors worked for Johns Hopkins and received support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Bristol-Myers provided drugs to the small percentage that received treatment. In response to the $1 billion lawsuit lawyers for Johns Hopkins said,
“Johns Hopkins expresses profound sympathy for individuals and families impacted by the deplorable 1940s syphilis study funded and conducted by the U.S. government in Guatemala. We respect the legal process, and we will continue to vigorously defend the lawsuit.”
A spokesman for the Rockefeller Foundation said the lawsuit has no merit, and they had no role in the funding, management, or design of the study. Bristol-Myer had no comment at the time.
The US Military was interested in finding a treatment for syphilis, which had no cure when the Tuskegee Experiment began. They estimated that as many as 350,000 soldiers might contract syphilis while fighting overseas wars and at home. Someone in the government thought it was just fine to infect targeted populations of prisoners (race undetermined), poor black people, and Guatemala’s brown people. The government was shamed into a settlement with the Tuskegee survivors. They had no concern for the Guatemalans they infected, with most receiving no treatment. The trial against private companies is in discovery, and we don’t know what information will be revealed. Here’s hoping that the $1 billion set aside is the floor and not the ceiling for compensation.
In addition to all the history of the government mistreating Black and brown patients. The vaccines that have yet to be approved have been pushed by an administration and a soon-to-be ex-President who has lied to us every step of the way of COVID-19. Under Operation Warp Speed, short cuts were taken to determine the efficacy and safety of the drugs. There is a concern about whether pharmaceutical companies will take advantage of the virus and the great need for a vaccine to pursue profits over safety like some did in the overprescribing of opioids that multiple companies have reached settlements about.
I was in a conversation with a loved one today where I was told,
“I’m not taking the vaccine, and you’re not either.”
Dismissing for the moment whether I’m taking orders like that, the concern is real. Once it became clear that COVID-19 was disproportionately affecting minorities and the elderly, the Trump administration’s interest seemed to go straight to getting America back to work and less about instituting methods to stop the spread. It isn’t yet clear as to who will get the vaccine first when available. It doesn’t seem an unreasonable fear that the government will once again experiment on those who it values least while the kinks are being worked out.
At the end of the day, I will probably take the vaccine, but I’m not going to be first in line either.
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Previously Published on Medium
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