Tuskegee re-examined

Like most popular Leftist memes, it seems that the classic narrative of the Tuskegee syphilis story, as a prime example of unbridled government racism and callousness, is basically untrue.

Richard Schweder explains:

One such case, in which sensational and consequential declarations have been made without the benefit of robust impartial debate, relates to 'The 'Tuskegee Study of untreated syphilis in the Negro male'. The 'Tuskegee Study' was conducted in Macon County, Alabama between 1932 and 1972, and is often associated with the image of monstrous government researchers allowing black patients to suffer from a curable and devastating infection (syphilis), so as to document the natural course of the disease.

The study, which was conducted openly and without secrecy, is now commonly and routinely portrayed in one or more of the following ways: as racist science; as 'a programme of controlled genocide' (whites against blacks); as a violation of basic human rights; as a study by the US government's Public Health Service in which effective treatment for a fatal disease was withheld from a poor, uneducated, vulnerable minority group in disregard of their health and safety; as a callous scientific pursuit that ignored human values and was 'almost beyond belief and human compassion'; as 'an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens'; as a research project in which the government gave syphilis to black people so as to scientifically document the natural course of the illness; as an 'experiment' in which human beings were treated like guinea pigs or laboratory rats.
...
Accusations of racism, egregious harm and betrayal (lack of informed consent) are common features of the horror-story account. A sober representation in this genre might state that the Tuskegee syphilis study was 'a US Public Health Service experiment that allowed 400 black males of Tuskegee to go unknowingly without syphilis medication for 40 years simply to satisfy the medical profession's curiosity about what happens to people when they aren't cured of venereal disease' (3).

The implication of that statement, of course, is that the syphilis infections of the residents of Macon County in 1932 could have been cured, yet vulnerable black men were kept ignorant of their condition and left to suffer because of the racist attitudes at the Public Health Service - and that all this was done in the name of callous science by researchers who had no real interest in the public good or the welfare of members of a poor minority group in the South.

Read the whole fascinating essay here.