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130. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
0:03
Speaker 1: The history podcast That's not Your History class with me
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Speaker 1: or a host Katie Charlewood, History Harlot and reader of books.
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Speaker 1: I actually got in trouble this week, last week, a
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Speaker 1: period of time recently because I refer to myself as
0:21
Speaker 1: the history of Harlot and I've done so for years,
0:23
Speaker 1: because this woman claimed I was stealing a sex worker
0:27
Speaker 1: slur as if it isn't just a slur against women,
0:31
Speaker 1: which I am. But anyway, if you've been listening to
0:35
Speaker 1: me for a long time, then you know this story.
0:37
Speaker 1: If you're new or new ish. When I started making
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Speaker 1: digital content to go along digital content, social media stuff
0:45
Speaker 1: to go along with the podcast, because I was out
0:48
Speaker 1: there talking history while also having you fill some set
0:51
Speaker 1: of thumbbags, some people, mainly men, some women took umbrage
0:57
Speaker 1: with the fact that I exist, so they were very
1:01
Speaker 1: unhappy that I was, you know, teaching history online. Will
1:05
Speaker 1: also happening to have an ample bosom that I was
1:08
Speaker 1: not deliberately trying to cover up. So because I wasn't
1:12
Speaker 1: severely modest and if I'm recording in the summer or
1:17
Speaker 1: of I'm in my pajamas in my house sometimes because
1:19
Speaker 1: you know, I started off recording in COVID, you know,
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Speaker 1: so they sometimes you'll be wearing stuff that was more
1:25
Speaker 1: you know, seasonally appropriate. It actually got to the point
1:30
Speaker 1: that when I started wearing jumpers in winter, people were
1:33
Speaker 1: messaging me to make sure that I wasn't being offended
1:36
Speaker 1: by trolls because people would consistently call me like a
1:40
Speaker 1: whore and a hussy in things like four years. So
1:44
Speaker 1: I ended up calling myself the history Harlot because I'm like, fine,
1:48
Speaker 1: you want to call me a harlot, call me a harlot,
1:50
Speaker 1: but I'm the history harlot because I am a slut
1:52
Speaker 1: for history and also potatoes. But that's another story for
1:56
Speaker 1: another day. Anyway, that was a whole thing, which which
2:02
Speaker 1: was weird because I'm spending this week trying to like
2:05
Speaker 1: finalize things from my tour which is happening in the US.
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Speaker 1: So I'm going to be in Boston and Pennsylvania and
2:14
Speaker 1: Albany in Syracuse, and I'm going to be in Toronto.
2:18
Speaker 1: So the Toronto Day like just got released in like
2:21
Speaker 1: ten percent of the tickets are gone already, like they're
2:24
Speaker 1: just they're just gone. So it's been wild, Like I
2:27
Speaker 1: can't believe they're selling like hotcakes. So this is really fun,
2:31
Speaker 1: really exciting for me. But if you want to see
2:33
Speaker 1: me places like just get your tickets. Buy your tickets
2:36
Speaker 1: by it for Mother's Day, a late Valentine's present, ourbor day.
2:41
Speaker 1: I don't know, like pick a holiday and be like,
2:43
Speaker 1: here is your gift, because you should. So that being said,
2:49
Speaker 1: it is Black History Month. Smooth segue there, Okay, it's
2:53
Speaker 1: a Black History Month. And I started off Black History
2:55
Speaker 1: Months by talking about a racist white man. I then
2:59
Speaker 1: talked about the murder of women, which was another thing.
3:03
Speaker 1: But on the Patreon, I did release a Josephine Baker
3:06
Speaker 1: episode because any excuse to talk about Josephine Baker, which
3:12
Speaker 1: I did perform as a live show. So every now
3:15
Speaker 1: and again a live show will end up like as
3:17
Speaker 1: an episode if I can get it recorded. But sometimes
3:22
Speaker 1: that doesn't work out for me. And just so you know,
3:25
Speaker 1: like every like live show has a different topic, I
3:29
Speaker 1: don't do the tame do the same topic twice. I
3:34
Speaker 1: don't do it. It's like, if I'm going to talk
3:36
Speaker 1: about Josephine Baker, for example, I'll do it at this
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Speaker 1: place and then the next thing, I could be talking
3:43
Speaker 1: about the Great Molasses Flood or you know, or the Titanic.
3:48
Speaker 1: I could be talking about anything. But like, it's never
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Speaker 1: the same story twice. It's always a unique experience. Because
3:55
Speaker 1: if you're, you know, popping out some pennies to come
3:59
Speaker 1: see me, you deserve that unique experience. And that's the
4:03
Speaker 1: way I see it, Like you deserve something that's yours,
4:07
Speaker 1: you know. But I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Katie,
4:10
Speaker 1: quite your chippel chabba, In fact me, In fact you
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Speaker 1: I will. But first we've got to get our source on.
4:19
Speaker 1: Our sources are Effects of the untreated Syphilis in the
4:24
Speaker 1: Negro Male, nineteen thirty two to nineteen seventy two. Baker
4:27
Speaker 1: et al. Examining Tuskegee, The Infamous Syphilis Study and its
4:32
Speaker 1: Legacy by Susan Revelbie, Racism and Research. The case of
4:37
Speaker 1: the Tuskegee Syphilis Study by Alan M. Brent. The Legacy
4:42
Speaker 1: of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study by Cats et al. Bad Blood,
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Speaker 1: The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment by James H. Jones. The Tuskegee
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Speaker 1: syphili Study by fred D Gray Not Stunus rivers in
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Speaker 1: the Tuskegee Syphis study Jim crow South by Lynn kay
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Speaker 1: sheer It And of course we have a favorites history
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Speaker 1: dot com and biography dot com. Now, it wouldn't have
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Speaker 1: been fair for me to go all the way through
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Speaker 1: a Black History Month and not talk about something important. Now,
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Speaker 1: I know I've covered before things like the Stockholm syndrome
5:22
Speaker 1: situation or the Stanford prison experiment. I have a fascination
5:29
Speaker 1: it is probably the nicest term for it, for misrepresented history.
5:36
Speaker 1: And a lot of the time information is just poorly represented.
5:42
Speaker 1: And back when I was studying psychology, you would get
5:44
Speaker 1: all these information about all of these syndromes and situations
5:49
Speaker 1: and experiments, and then the deeper you dig into them,
5:53
Speaker 1: a lot of it was absolute ballocks, like it was
5:56
Speaker 1: based on like messed up data in LA and people
6:00
Speaker 1: not doing their job properly looking at your Stockholm syndrome,
6:04
Speaker 1: and it's a whole whole thing. And so Tuskigee was
6:08
Speaker 1: something I was really interested in looking into it, but
6:12
Speaker 1: because I know of how terrible it was, it was
6:14
Speaker 1: something I held back from. But it would be disrespectful
6:18
Speaker 1: for me to just not mention it. Ever, And this
6:21
Speaker 1: was requested by like so many people. Next week we
6:25
Speaker 1: have a hopeful story for the last story of Black
6:28
Speaker 1: History Month, something uplifting, something that has sort of good
6:32
Speaker 1: news at the end, starts terrible but think gets better.
6:35
Speaker 1: This one kind of starts well and then just gets
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Speaker 1: worse over time. You'll know my fascination with just science, right,
6:44
Speaker 1: historical science especially. I mean, I talked about ketalogs, like
6:47
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it's fascinating. But everything about
6:53
Speaker 1: this is bad, right, not just ethically bad, but scientifically bad.
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Speaker 1: Everything is bollocks. It's so unfathomably awful that it's I
7:10
Speaker 1: don't even know how. I mean, I do know how,
7:13
Speaker 1: but like the fact that this continued for so long
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Speaker 1: is abhorrent, and that is the nicest way I can
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Speaker 1: phrase that. And it also I also had to look
7:23
Speaker 1: up how to pronounce Tuskegee because I listened to lots
7:27
Speaker 1: of people pronounce it because I was calling it Tuskegee
7:31
Speaker 1: because phonetic merely. I'm like, that's right. It's like that
7:36
Speaker 1: time I called Galli poly galopoly. Sometimes you just say
7:40
Speaker 1: words wrong. So Tuskegee. If I do mess it up,
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Speaker 1: I would like to formally apologize to macin County, Macon County, Alabama.
7:51
Speaker 1: The a's don't cause me a bit of bother. So
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Speaker 1: the Tuskegee Sypho was study is it's it's complicated, it's
8:03
Speaker 1: it's not that complicated like as a baseline, but in itself,
8:06
Speaker 1: in its entirety, is quite complicated and effectively, it was
8:11
Speaker 1: the study of latent syphilis in black men and how
8:17
Speaker 1: it progressed in their bodies. And there was supposed to
8:20
Speaker 1: be six hundred men in this test in total, so
8:23
Speaker 1: two hundred control, four hundred width. But before we even
8:28
Speaker 1: get to the study, I'm going to have to give
8:30
Speaker 1: you some context, especially for people who are not US based,
8:34
Speaker 1: because again Global Podcast, this is not an American accent.
8:38
Speaker 1: This is a weird Scottish Irish hybrid mix that well
8:42
Speaker 1: sometimes maybe even sound English or on the occasion German.
8:47
Speaker 1: I've been told it happens, but iles didn't comfortably good.
8:53
Speaker 1: Then let's begin. So in eighteen sixty five, the US
8:59
Speaker 1: government ratifies the thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution. An amendment
9:05
Speaker 1: of the Constitution means that the Constitution has been changed.
9:11
Speaker 1: It has been amended, because you can change the constitution
9:16
Speaker 1: in a democracy so technically, formally, this ends the enslavement
9:23
Speaker 1: of black people in the United States of America. Formally,
9:28
Speaker 1: so officially, slavery is ended. Everybody is free, well not
9:36
Speaker 1: not as so much that everybody is free is that
9:39
Speaker 1: no more slaves can be sold, bought, born into like chattel.
9:46
Speaker 1: Slavery is gone, so chattle slavery is not only are
9:50
Speaker 1: your slave, but every generation after you will also be enslaved.
9:58
Speaker 1: So yeah, slavery, bye bye. That's a very simplified cliff
10:02
Speaker 1: notes version. But it's gone. So black people no longer slaves,
10:07
Speaker 1: That's what this means. That doesn't mean things get easy,
10:11
Speaker 1: because society and laws are put in place to continue
10:16
Speaker 1: keeping the boot on the neck, so to speak. So
10:21
Speaker 1: you've got segregation, you've got Jim Crow laws, you have
10:24
Speaker 1: all of these things working together to keep black people
10:28
Speaker 1: down in a white dominated United States. And so with segregation,
10:34
Speaker 1: you had separate schools. If you had schools, separate hospitals,
10:38
Speaker 1: swimming pools, like everything, and across the US there is
10:42
Speaker 1: a distinct lack of black schools. So in the eighteen eighties,
10:50
Speaker 1: Booker T. Washington, who was an influential black leader and
10:54
Speaker 1: nineteenth slash twentieth century civil rights activist established which is
11:00
Speaker 1: a normal school. A normal school is effectively a school
11:07
Speaker 1: for teachers, so it's a teaching school. So in the
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Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, Booker T. Washington establishes the Tuskegee Institute, which
11:14
Speaker 1: is a black teaching college. Education is segregated, so if
11:19
Speaker 1: you want to have black kids learning, you're going to
11:21
Speaker 1: need black teachers. And I like to think this was
11:24
Speaker 1: Booker T. Washington's way of sticking his middle finger right
11:27
Speaker 1: up to white America because the Tuskegee Institute was built
11:32
Speaker 1: on a former plantation, So not only is it a
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Speaker 1: teaching college, but it promotes practical experience to prepare students
11:41
Speaker 1: for work outside. So it would teach you how to
11:46
Speaker 1: man machinery and work in a factory. It was to
11:50
Speaker 1: educate and provide employment, kind of like technical schools in
11:55
Speaker 1: sort of the UK and Ireland. I don't know what
11:57
Speaker 1: they be like elsewhere, but you would have these ten
12:00
Speaker 1: skills which would teach you like practical employment skills, so
12:04
Speaker 1: you could learn to become a carpenter or a joiner,
12:08
Speaker 1: or a machine tech of some kind of engineer. Like
12:11
Speaker 1: you would learn all of these skills a brick there
12:13
Speaker 1: even like you would learn these practical qualifications. The Tuskegee
12:18
Speaker 1: Institute is so successful that it becomes the blueprint for
12:22
Speaker 1: higher education in the South for black people. It is
12:27
Speaker 1: to prepare them to go out into a segregated world.
12:32
Speaker 1: So skip forward a couple of decades by that, I
12:37
Speaker 1: mean about four it's the nineteen twenties Oslo, Norway, and
12:45
Speaker 1: they have this retrospective study on syphilis. You've got these doctors,
12:50
Speaker 1: they're going through some research and they're like, hang on
12:52
Speaker 1: a second, these fellas have syphilis, way better treat them.
12:56
Speaker 1: But they have all this data and they're going through
12:58
Speaker 1: all this information and they're like, oh wow, this is
13:03
Speaker 1: very very important because the world at that point is
13:08
Speaker 1: very very worried about cephalus, especially see post the First
13:14
Speaker 1: World War. Syphilis was the big scale and there was
13:21
Speaker 1: no treatment, no cure at this time because penicillin it's
13:25
Speaker 1: not a thing yet in the West, like it's there
13:29
Speaker 1: isn't an Arab countries, but like it's not. It hasn't
13:32
Speaker 1: made it as far yet and certainly not as you know,
13:37
Speaker 1: a broad treatment. So the United States Public Health Service
13:42
Speaker 1: they hear of this study and because they are mad
13:45
Speaker 1: obsessed with cephalis, they decide they should study how the
13:48
Speaker 1: disease progresses in the human body. It's like they saw
13:52
Speaker 1: that study and went, ooh, we should do that here.
13:56
Speaker 1: So cephalus is the big bad and it had been
13:59
Speaker 1: around for a long time with still no cure for it.
14:04
Speaker 1: So it has existed like recorded history since the fourteen hundreds.
14:11
Speaker 1: Now some people like to say that it's because Christopher
14:14
Speaker 1: Columbus fucked a lama. Now, I can neither confirm or
14:18
Speaker 1: deny whether Christopher Columbus shagged an alpaca lama or any
14:23
Speaker 1: other woolen mammal, Like I haven't seen any contemporary sketches
14:27
Speaker 1: of it, you know, so he very well could have,
14:31
Speaker 1: or it could have come from somewhere else, because nobody
14:34
Speaker 1: really knows where it came from. We just kind of
14:37
Speaker 1: know that it was there. So it has existed just
14:44
Speaker 1: for so long. We're talking centuries, and it is like everywhere,
14:52
Speaker 1: like no one knows where it came from, and everybody
14:55
Speaker 1: is blaming each other for like starting it. Right, So
14:59
Speaker 1: the Tai call it the British disease, and in every
15:04
Speaker 1: everybody is just blaming each other for it. So you've
15:07
Speaker 1: got the Titians who call it the British disease. The
15:10
Speaker 1: English and the Italians call it the French disease because
15:13
Speaker 1: any excuse to blame the French they do it, though
15:16
Speaker 1: they do use any excuse to blame the French. The
15:18
Speaker 1: French call it the Spanish disease. In India they call
15:22
Speaker 1: it the Portuguese disease. In Russia they call it the
15:26
Speaker 1: Polish disease. In Poland it's the Turkish disease. The Turkish
15:31
Speaker 1: call it the Christians disease. I like to blame the
15:34
Speaker 1: Crusades for that one and feel like they're probably on point.
15:38
Speaker 1: And in Japan they call it the Chinese pox. That
15:42
Speaker 1: being said, syphilis was known as the pox like throughout
15:47
Speaker 1: many many eras in history. So a lot of the
15:50
Speaker 1: time if you're reading about something historical and they mentioned pox,
15:55
Speaker 1: and it's just pox on its own, not small pox, cowpox, whatever,
16:00
Speaker 1: it's cephalus. They're talking about cephalus. So I'm gonna give
16:06
Speaker 1: away backstory to syphalis. Now, I'll probably do like a
16:09
Speaker 1: proper deep dive like Mini sod bitysre on it sometime,
16:12
Speaker 1: but full Now, syphilis has four stages. The primary stage
16:21
Speaker 1: and this is where these chonkras appear, and so they're
16:24
Speaker 1: like these sores or polyps or lesion. I'm really lesions
16:29
Speaker 1: because they're not sore a colm sores, but they're not
16:32
Speaker 1: painful and they're not itchy or uncomfortable or weird. They're
16:37
Speaker 1: just kind of lumps that appear. So the chakra they
16:42
Speaker 1: appear at the site in which the bacteria enters the body,
16:48
Speaker 1: which tends to be the genitals on or in, which
16:56
Speaker 1: is why it's more noticeable in men because they would
16:58
Speaker 1: notice it more because you know, you would see it
17:01
Speaker 1: like you would see it either on the penis or
17:04
Speaker 1: in the vagina, So you would only really notice if
17:08
Speaker 1: you were feeling inside of the vagina, like for something unusual,
17:12
Speaker 1: which is why it's easier to actually pinpoint when men
17:16
Speaker 1: get it, because you'd be like, oh, look, there's a
17:20
Speaker 1: weird lump on my dick. You would figure it out, right.
17:24
Speaker 1: So they typically form within the first three weeks, and
17:28
Speaker 1: this is when you are the most contagious and again
17:32
Speaker 1: more noticeable to men. So they're there and then after
17:36
Speaker 1: a few weeks they just kind of disappear. So like
17:40
Speaker 1: that people will know, men especially will know if they'll
17:42
Speaker 1: suddenly a weird lump on their penis. They're like, that's new,
17:46
Speaker 1: that's noticeable. So the secondary stage, that's typically two to
17:52
Speaker 1: ten weeks after the primary stage, you get a rash
17:56
Speaker 1: all over your body and like more of these chankras appear, like,
17:59
Speaker 1: oh like everywhere, and you can also get a rash
18:03
Speaker 1: on the palm of your hands. I'm convinced this is
18:07
Speaker 1: the whole, Like if you start wanking, you'll get hairy palms.
18:10
Speaker 1: Comes from like, I'm convinced of it. Right, it's a
18:13
Speaker 1: whole thing, like either that or it's some weird werewove kink.
18:19
Speaker 1: I don't know anyway. So not only do you have
18:23
Speaker 1: these symptoms, but you also have flu like symptoms, so
18:26
Speaker 1: like headache, fever, like all that kind of stuff. The
18:32
Speaker 1: third stage is the latent stage, which is when you're
18:36
Speaker 1: sort of less infectious. And what's interesting in this is
18:41
Speaker 1: it split into like three groups. So latent syphilis can
18:47
Speaker 1: affect you in three ways. One you can be asymptomatic,
18:53
Speaker 1: so you can test positive but not show any symptoms.
18:58
Speaker 1: You can be spontaneously cured, which is what everyone hopes for.
19:04
Speaker 1: We don't know why this happens, so like suddenly you're
19:07
Speaker 1: just fine, They'll test you. Syphilis be gone. And the
19:13
Speaker 1: final third of people who contract syphilis who get to
19:18
Speaker 1: the latent stage, their bodies are ravaged by the disease.
19:26
Speaker 1: See now I'm convinced Mary Todd Lincoln had syphilis, Like
19:31
Speaker 1: you cannot convince me otherwise you look into her medical
19:35
Speaker 1: reports mmm, and her history. M. I've got opinions, which
19:42
Speaker 1: brings me to the fourth stage, the tertiary syphilis. So
19:47
Speaker 1: tertiary syphilis, it happens like between three and fifteen years
19:52
Speaker 1: after the initial infection, and there are so many complications
19:58
Speaker 1: from long term. And this is why syphilis is called
20:02
Speaker 1: the great imitator because it can affect so many parts
20:06
Speaker 1: of your body. It can affect your vision, you're hearing.
20:09
Speaker 1: It can cause insanity, It can cause paralysis and nerve damage.
20:15
Speaker 1: It can affect your bones and your skin, like your
20:19
Speaker 1: body is deteriorating. It is attacking the body like syphilis
20:24
Speaker 1: is attacking you. And this is why it's called the
20:28
Speaker 1: great imitator because it imitates so many other diseases, because
20:33
Speaker 1: it can affect different people in different ways, Like it
20:36
Speaker 1: caused so many problems that the death wouldn't automatically be
20:41
Speaker 1: attributed to syphilis. So you could be deaf, blind, paralyzed.
20:47
Speaker 1: It could happen anytime like it wouldn't. And the only
20:51
Speaker 1: way to be sure that someone had syphilis was to
20:54
Speaker 1: perform an autopsy then at that point, because if someone
20:57
Speaker 1: has cardiovascular issues or neurological damage, but if you've got
21:02
Speaker 1: cardiovascular issues, particularly like if you have a heart attack,
21:06
Speaker 1: then you're not gonna be like that was a syphilis's
21:08
Speaker 1: heart attack. Now you're gonna be like that was a
21:09
Speaker 1: heart attack. So until you do an autopsy, you're gonna
21:12
Speaker 1: not know the cause of that. Now I know. I
21:15
Speaker 1: said there wasn't a cure specifically, there was treatment of symptoms.
21:20
Speaker 1: And with the past, the best way to treat any
21:23
Speaker 1: condition is with poison. It's like we kind of do
21:27
Speaker 1: it today as well. So botox is used, you know
21:31
Speaker 1: for people with kidney troubles and so many things because
21:35
Speaker 1: it is a paralytic agent, and it is used to
21:38
Speaker 1: well for healthcare. So they're using, like now, back then
21:44
Speaker 1: poison to cure a bunch of stuff. You've got mercury,
21:48
Speaker 1: which is the go to for like everything, What are
21:51
Speaker 1: we doing shoving mercury and their arse. Why heavy metal
21:55
Speaker 1: seems to be the way to treat things and then
21:59
Speaker 1: are snick. One of my favorite topics a touch of arsenic.
22:06
Speaker 1: So there's this arsenic derivative which our spheramine that sounds
22:12
Speaker 1: bad when I say it doesn't. It arspheramine by this
22:15
Speaker 1: German chemist, Paul Erlick, and it works. It does work,
22:19
Speaker 1: but it takes bloody ages to do so, and it
22:22
Speaker 1: has to be used in conjunction with other treatments, so
22:25
Speaker 1: you'd have to take that and your mercury because the
22:31
Speaker 1: thing is as well. And I've mentioned it before with
22:34
Speaker 1: the arsenic el was of Austria and stuff like arsenic
22:37
Speaker 1: does well for like a certain period of time, but
22:41
Speaker 1: like once you stop taking it, things go su with fast.
22:45
Speaker 1: And like the heavy metal poisoning with mercury, some of
22:50
Speaker 1: the symptoms of syphilis can be very similar to mercury poisoning,
22:56
Speaker 1: like it's wild. So this is pre penicillin. So the treatment,
23:05
Speaker 1: which by the Second World War was an eight to
23:07
Speaker 1: twelve week arsenic and bismuth injection, but we're not even
23:11
Speaker 1: there yet. Like bismuth is the ingredient, like the other
23:15
Speaker 1: ingredient in pepto bismal so like you would be getting
23:18
Speaker 1: your arsenic shots right with the bismuth like because you
23:21
Speaker 1: needed to do the two things together. It was like
23:23
Speaker 1: a black powdery like substance. Again, I'll go into more
23:27
Speaker 1: detail properly when I do, like a full syphilis episode.
23:32
Speaker 1: So we are pre penicillin. And this brings us to
23:37
Speaker 1: the origin of the Tuskegee syphilis study. We have the
23:41
Speaker 1: study in Oslo. The US public health services like super
23:44
Speaker 1: inter we have this massive moral padic, like you've got
23:50
Speaker 1: the social Hygiene campaign which happened. It is like basically
23:54
Speaker 1: they were blaming women for spreading the disease and not
23:57
Speaker 1: like American soldiers who were shagging around or as we
24:03
Speaker 1: historians like to call it, the official term is slutting about.
24:07
Speaker 1: And so they were spreading it because they were going
24:09
Speaker 1: like home to their hometown and being with their best
24:12
Speaker 1: girl and then I'm go after war, you have to
24:15
Speaker 1: fuck me or I don't know, do it for your country.
24:21
Speaker 1: Grace two quality song don't care. So they're mad worried
24:28
Speaker 1: about stephalis because it is prevalent in the US army
24:33
Speaker 1: and it actually causes like more like vacancies. Is the
24:37
Speaker 1: best way you can put it because it is the
24:40
Speaker 1: second most common debilitating ailment after the Spanish flu or
24:46
Speaker 1: as we like to call it, the flu. So they
24:52
Speaker 1: want to contain it, they want to reduce the spread
24:54
Speaker 1: of it, and they want to hopefully cure it. And
24:58
Speaker 1: it is a cause for concern for the public health service.
25:02
Speaker 1: And thanks to the Oslo study, they start researching syphilis
25:06
Speaker 1: rates in the rural southern states with high black populations,
25:11
Speaker 1: so Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. So there's this common consensus
25:19
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, and there's this whole theory that
25:23
Speaker 1: black people were more likely to have sexually transmitted diseases
25:28
Speaker 1: because they were slotting about effectively, they didn't have the
25:31
Speaker 1: same moral standards as white folks. Like, that's the theory, right,
25:36
Speaker 1: And so they do these studies, the first studies in Mississippi,
25:40
Speaker 1: and they discover that twenty percent of the rural black
25:43
Speaker 1: population have syphilis. And so they're like, we should have
25:48
Speaker 1: a treatment program, but of course that needs money, and
25:53
Speaker 1: so they want to run studies across six southern states
25:56
Speaker 1: to see the scale and to provide treatment. And so
25:59
Speaker 1: they discover the Julius Rosenthald Fund and they get to
26:04
Speaker 1: Macon County, Alabama, which has a thirty six percent positivity rate,
26:12
Speaker 1: and like it's not the highest rate out there, like
26:15
Speaker 1: other the counties did have higher rates. But this one
26:20
Speaker 1: was incredibly handy for the way they wanted to study
26:24
Speaker 1: this because it was close to the Tuskegee Institute and
26:29
Speaker 1: there was a whole infrastructure there. You had black doctors
26:34
Speaker 1: and nurses, and they were treating black patients in a
26:37
Speaker 1: hospital that can do that because again we're talking about
26:41
Speaker 1: the segregated South. White people went to their hospitals, Black
26:44
Speaker 1: people went to the els. Like there was never a
26:47
Speaker 1: mix between the two except when they really wanted to
26:51
Speaker 1: do things. And it seems to me that one of
26:55
Speaker 1: the reasons why they wanted to have somewhere that had
26:58
Speaker 1: these black run and staffed institutions was like as a
27:03
Speaker 1: fallback plan so that if something did go tits up,
27:08
Speaker 1: they could blame it on black people. Of all the
27:12
Speaker 1: people living in Macon County, eighty two percent were black,
27:16
Speaker 1: and they were living well below the poverty line. These
27:19
Speaker 1: were vulnerable people they exploited. They were talking share croppers,
27:24
Speaker 1: tenant farmers, living within a structure that was designed to
27:28
Speaker 1: keep them indebted. So the whole purposes, even though they
27:33
Speaker 1: are free people and they have rights. They don't really,
27:38
Speaker 1: but they have some rights. Landowners would fuck them over.
27:44
Speaker 1: They would have high rents on the properties that they
27:46
Speaker 1: were in, the inflated prices on tools, in seeds, you know,
27:52
Speaker 1: things they would need to actually grow food to eat
27:56
Speaker 1: and sell, and they would underpay on crops, so they
28:02
Speaker 1: would underpay on food and for cotton and all that stuff.
28:07
Speaker 1: So the system was designed again to keep the boot
28:10
Speaker 1: on the neck, to ensure that these people were not
28:13
Speaker 1: upwardly mobile. And most of these people they were just surviving.
28:20
Speaker 1: And most of them had never seen a doctor, because
28:24
Speaker 1: I mean, they're sixteen doctors in the county right, only
28:27
Speaker 1: one of them is black. So if you've lived in
28:30
Speaker 1: a society, in a culture that has made you appear
28:36
Speaker 1: less than that always puts these people above you, who
28:41
Speaker 1: have historically treated you worse than animals, you might be
28:47
Speaker 1: not exactly the most trusting of them. Another factor is medicine,
28:52
Speaker 1: and doctors are expensive, like they're expensive now, they were
28:58
Speaker 1: also expensive them. But they wanted to get people into
29:02
Speaker 1: this study, and so they put out these flyers and
29:06
Speaker 1: ads asking if people had and I quote bad blood
29:11
Speaker 1: and offered free testing. I'm gonna actually read out what
29:16
Speaker 1: the flyer said. This is this is the text color people.
29:22
Speaker 1: Do you have bad blood, free blood tests, free tradement
29:24
Speaker 1: by county health barbining government doctors. You may feel well
29:28
Speaker 1: and still have bad blood. Come and bring on your family.
29:33
Speaker 1: You may have noticed that nowhere on that flyer did
29:37
Speaker 1: it mention syphilis. Later on, it has argued that bad
29:42
Speaker 1: blood was a term for syphilis, like box a nicer
29:48
Speaker 1: way to say it, you know, like a more polite
29:50
Speaker 1: way to state syphilis, but bad blood was a catch
29:57
Speaker 1: all term for like a bunch of conditions, fatigue, mental illness,
30:02
Speaker 1: tommy issues, like everything. Basically, it was a way for
30:08
Speaker 1: them to absolve themselves of any accountability. We didn't need
30:13
Speaker 1: to say it with syphilis because they would have known,
30:17
Speaker 1: as the argument, so after someone tested positive for syphilis,
30:27
Speaker 1: they would be told they had bad blood, not told
30:30
Speaker 1: they have syphilis, but specifically bad blood. So not only
30:35
Speaker 1: were they claiming that bad blood was a term for syphilis,
30:41
Speaker 1: but they also argue that the reason they call it
30:46
Speaker 1: bad blood is because the black men would not have
30:52
Speaker 1: understood what it was even if they told them, like
30:59
Speaker 1: Nobody knows what anything is most of the time. If
31:02
Speaker 1: you're not a medical professional. If someone names an illness
31:05
Speaker 1: or a disease or things related to it, you don't
31:08
Speaker 1: know what it is. Right. You don't walk into a
31:12
Speaker 1: doctor's office and suddenly know what chronic interthermentocrosis is, hypertophomomis,
31:18
Speaker 1: peti risis, rubia polarisis. Like, No, you don't know what
31:22
Speaker 1: it is like until someone explains it to you, Like, like,
31:28
Speaker 1: here's the thing, like if you have an underactive thyroid
31:31
Speaker 1: or an overactive thyroid. I had to google which one
31:36
Speaker 1: was which because I couldn't remember. I was like, which
31:39
Speaker 1: one does? What doesn't mean I'm stupid. It just means
31:43
Speaker 1: that it's never been relevant for me to look up.
31:47
Speaker 1: Like people understand things. You just got to explain it
31:50
Speaker 1: right Anyway. The whole argument is that they were too
31:57
Speaker 1: ignorant to get treatment, so they had to lie. They
32:02
Speaker 1: would not have been able to help them if they
32:04
Speaker 1: had not lied, because they would not have understood them,
32:08
Speaker 1: is the basis of their argument. So overall, they do
32:14
Speaker 1: these tests and they have six hundred men in this
32:17
Speaker 1: initial part of the study. Four hundred have syphilis. Of
32:23
Speaker 1: they've had it for at least five years, because they're
32:25
Speaker 1: looking for territory syphilis, like latent syphilis, so they want
32:29
Speaker 1: people who have had syphilis, men black men who have
32:32
Speaker 1: had syphilis for at least five years. And then they
32:35
Speaker 1: have two hundred men as the control so men who
32:38
Speaker 1: don't have syphilis. And the whole plan initially is to
32:44
Speaker 1: provide treatments. So it's like so many of these arsenic
32:47
Speaker 1: shots for so many weeks along with a mercury rub.
32:52
Speaker 1: So they're doing this in conjunction with each other, and
32:56
Speaker 1: that's the plan. They're also giving them aspirin. Now, again,
33:03
Speaker 1: these are people who have been working hard for years
33:07
Speaker 1: and they don't get medical help. So if you give
33:12
Speaker 1: someone a painkiller, yeah, never had a painkiller before, they're
33:17
Speaker 1: gonna think it's amazing. You give somebody an ibuy prof
33:21
Speaker 1: and has never had an ibuprophlem before, like woo either,
33:24
Speaker 1: that's gonna have the best time, like what no pain? Wonderful.
33:31
Speaker 1: By nineteen thirty one, the Rosenworld Fund dries up because
33:36
Speaker 1: we are banks back in the center of the Great Depression,
33:40
Speaker 1: and because there isn't any money, it is decided that
33:44
Speaker 1: the entire project is to be canceled, they won't be
33:47
Speaker 1: able to afford staff or the medicine for treatment. And
33:51
Speaker 1: so as they're packing up and they're getting things together,
33:53
Speaker 1: the two government doctors running the show, Clark and Vaudelaire,
33:57
Speaker 1: are like, why not continue the study and just not
34:02
Speaker 1: provide the treatment, Like we can do it for six
34:05
Speaker 1: months for science, and like they already have all this
34:09
Speaker 1: data and it would be a waste not to continue
34:12
Speaker 1: to study how this disease affects the body over time,
34:17
Speaker 1: like we're already doing it, Like we can't cure them anyway,
34:22
Speaker 1: Like it's so easy. Like really, when you think about it,
34:26
Speaker 1: it's a baby step. It's not like, oh, we're definitely
34:30
Speaker 1: just gonna let these men suffer, Like they don't see
34:33
Speaker 1: it like that. It's like, well, we can't help them anyway,
34:36
Speaker 1: but if we study them, we can see how it
34:39
Speaker 1: affects them, and then we can work on a way
34:42
Speaker 1: of curing it eventually. And so when they do get
34:48
Speaker 1: the funds in, because we have been studying them, we
34:51
Speaker 1: can then finally treat them. So this leads to the
34:56
Speaker 1: second reason for the study. So not only do they
35:04
Speaker 1: want to study the effects of syphilis on the body
35:06
Speaker 1: or latent syphilis on the body. There's this belief that
35:13
Speaker 1: the study would prove that black people were genetically dumber
35:18
Speaker 1: the white people, like they were just genetically less advanced,
35:24
Speaker 1: and that black people would have underdeveloped brains so they
35:28
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able. And this is where things like phrenology
35:31
Speaker 1: and all that bollocks come into it. So there's this
35:36
Speaker 1: idea that white people their brains are so advanced that
35:41
Speaker 1: they are more susceptible to neurosyphialis, which is when the
35:45
Speaker 1: disease basically destroys like the nerves in the brain or
35:50
Speaker 1: in the spinal flood. There's a whole thing. Again, I
35:53
Speaker 1: will do a proper episode on syphalis, but effectively it
35:57
Speaker 1: attacks the brain and that it makes you go insane, right,
36:01
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So the idea is because white people
36:06
Speaker 1: have like more advanced brains, that's what the syphilis attacks.
36:12
Speaker 1: And again to balance that out, the theory goes that
36:19
Speaker 1: black people having underdeveloped brains would not have neurocephalis or
36:25
Speaker 1: would not suffer from neurosyphalis because it wouldn't attack the brain. Yeah. Yeah,
36:35
Speaker 1: this is primitivism really when you think about it, it's
36:40
Speaker 1: like the body isn't advanced enough that sephalis wouldn't go
36:47
Speaker 1: for the brain, like it would attack the body instead,
36:51
Speaker 1: because having a better brain means you're more likely to
36:56
Speaker 1: get a brain disease. Okay, So yes, Eugenics is one
37:03
Speaker 1: of the reasons for the Tuskegee syphilis study because they're like, well,
37:08
Speaker 1: if we study them, we'll know and we can prove
37:11
Speaker 1: our bullgeite theory. So the men in the study, they're
37:16
Speaker 1: not told that they have sephalis at allever, Like that's
37:20
Speaker 1: the purpose is for them to live in ignorance and
37:23
Speaker 1: for them to receive placebos until such times as you know,
37:29
Speaker 1: they can do other things because they want to like
37:30
Speaker 1: test them, like over the years do blood test to
37:33
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff and just going to see how
37:36
Speaker 1: they go on. So three years later, nineteen thirty four,
37:41
Speaker 1: the first report is published about it. There are many
37:47
Speaker 1: over the years, but like the first one is in
37:48
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four and it is publicly available for doctors,
37:54
Speaker 1: so within the medical community it is widely available. But
38:00
Speaker 1: for these people like radio silence, So back to this
38:05
Speaker 1: like six month extension of the study, So they get
38:07
Speaker 1: a six month extension of the study because they're like, well,
38:10
Speaker 1: they're suffering anyway, we may as well watch them. And
38:14
Speaker 1: those six months pass and they're like, oh, why don't
38:17
Speaker 1: we just keep doing it? Like I said, it's very
38:20
Speaker 1: easy to kind of see how the humanity is stripped away.
38:27
Speaker 1: It's like one person makes a sharty decision and then
38:29
Speaker 1: another person makes a shirty decision, and you've got Interestingly,
38:36
Speaker 1: like over the years, people just come in and out
38:38
Speaker 1: of the study, like doctors, like the guys who started
38:41
Speaker 1: to end up leaving, and the guys who sort of
38:45
Speaker 1: they'll come in for like a couple months, so they'll
38:46
Speaker 1: come in for like a year or two. Nobody actually
38:49
Speaker 1: stays for the entire length of the study, and so
38:54
Speaker 1: it makes it easy to kind of absolve yourself of
38:57
Speaker 1: accountability because you're like, I was only there for a
39:00
Speaker 1: part of it, and I only dealt with like this,
39:02
Speaker 1: or you only did a blood test, or I gave
39:04
Speaker 1: them painkillers, but like they were like doing like typhoid
39:09
Speaker 1: shots and stuff. So like they were doing some good
39:12
Speaker 1: things at the time, but they were also you know,
39:15
Speaker 1: letting people suffer for no reason. So because over the
39:19
Speaker 1: years they would perform like all these different tests and exams,
39:24
Speaker 1: so you'd have X rays, you would have blood drawn,
39:27
Speaker 1: they would even perform spinal taps, which are incredibly painful,
39:33
Speaker 1: and they were doing it for just no reason because
39:37
Speaker 1: it wasn't helping, and they were waiting for people to
39:42
Speaker 1: die so that they could perform autopsies on the cadavers,
39:45
Speaker 1: Like they wanted to autopsy the corpse to see the
39:49
Speaker 1: effects of syphilis on the body. And so they were
39:52
Speaker 1: just waiting it out, like they would even pay for
39:54
Speaker 1: their funerals of some of like the the people in
39:58
Speaker 1: the study so they could get their hands on the
40:01
Speaker 1: body so they could perform the autopsy. And the majority
40:05
Speaker 1: of these experiments are being run by these white doctors, right,
40:11
Speaker 1: and naturally the black community starting to get suspicious, especially
40:15
Speaker 1: since they're not feeling better, they're not improving health wise,
40:20
Speaker 1: and yet no, they're just generally suspicious like about this
40:24
Speaker 1: whole thing. And they have to travel so far to
40:26
Speaker 1: get to their appointments that they end up covering it,
40:31
Speaker 1: like the Tuskegee study covers the cost of like getting
40:35
Speaker 1: them to appointments. They get people to drive them like
40:37
Speaker 1: to and from, they provide food, They provide all this
40:42
Speaker 1: stuff basically to continue studying these men and having them
40:47
Speaker 1: in the experiment. So they're providing, you know, some funding,
40:50
Speaker 1: they're providing some food, they're providing travel, and they act
40:54
Speaker 1: like they're providing medical care. But one thing they do
41:00
Speaker 1: is they actively stop the participants, the unwilling participants, unknowing
41:06
Speaker 1: participants really, because you can't consent if you don't know
41:09
Speaker 1: what you're doing. So they stop these black men from
41:13
Speaker 1: getting outside treatment. Like they get a list of names
41:18
Speaker 1: and they send it to like Macon County doctors with
41:21
Speaker 1: like the names of them and be like, don't treat them,
41:24
Speaker 1: don't give them these medicines because we need to study
41:27
Speaker 1: their bodies. And then, oh was it. Years later, when
41:35
Speaker 1: World War II breaks out, these men try and enlist.
41:41
Speaker 1: So they try and enlist for the army. And in
41:43
Speaker 1: order to join the army, you have to have a
41:45
Speaker 1: medical physical and one of the things they test you
41:48
Speaker 1: for in the army is syphilis because it's so rampant
41:55
Speaker 1: within the military. And so if you are diagnosed with syphilis,
41:59
Speaker 1: they will tell you. And so they send a list
42:03
Speaker 1: of like participants to recruiters to ensure that if they
42:07
Speaker 1: are tested, that they are not informed. And this is
42:12
Speaker 1: like what nine ten years after the initial quote six
42:16
Speaker 1: month study, and they're not even enlisted. Actually they're drafted.
42:20
Speaker 1: They're drafted. So like two hundred and fifty six, seven
42:25
Speaker 1: to fifty six of them are drafted, and the list
42:29
Speaker 1: goes in and they're like, do not treat them, do
42:32
Speaker 1: not tell them, like, just kick them out. And as
42:37
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties continue, what finally bursts onto the scene penicillin. Now,
42:44
Speaker 1: initially when penicillin is discovered in the Western world, when
42:49
Speaker 1: it's discovered and it you know, starts being mass produced
42:53
Speaker 1: when they like figure it out. When it's mass produced,
42:57
Speaker 1: it's initially being sort of rationed for the military. So
43:02
Speaker 1: even when it exists, it's not really being sent out
43:05
Speaker 1: too far and beyond. But you know, when the war
43:10
Speaker 1: is over, it starts being sent out to doctors. And
43:14
Speaker 1: penicillin it's like a miracle cure because it cures so
43:18
Speaker 1: many things. And so participants would be sent in, you know,
43:24
Speaker 1: to go to the doctor for you know, something else,
43:28
Speaker 1: like an injury or a cough or whatever, and they'd
43:32
Speaker 1: get penicillin, and so they would either get partial treatment
43:37
Speaker 1: or like proper treatment unintentionally, but they would get it.
43:42
Speaker 1: And these researchers. They are pissed because they didn't want
43:46
Speaker 1: to damage the integrity of the study, which is laughable
43:50
Speaker 1: and not in a funny way, but it is laughable.
43:53
Speaker 1: And so like thirty percent of their like infected patients
44:00
Speaker 1: would have received penicillin in one way or the other.
44:03
Speaker 1: And that's by like nineteen fifty two, so like five
44:07
Speaker 1: years ish after penicillin like really gets going in the US,
44:11
Speaker 1: and so they're like, oh, no, they've been treated. See
44:16
Speaker 1: what's laughable about the integrity of the study is that
44:20
Speaker 1: it's not managed. It's not apart from the fact that
44:25
Speaker 1: their record keeping is absolutely atrocious. Like the information they have,
44:32
Speaker 1: it's all over the place, and their whole point is
44:35
Speaker 1: to keep track of the six hundred men in this study.
44:39
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. People move. People travel for work
44:44
Speaker 1: and go to other places. So if they were there
44:47
Speaker 1: and then they moved to a different county and then
44:52
Speaker 1: got drafted or enlisted, and they do their medical test
44:55
Speaker 1: and the doctor goes, hey, you've got syphilis, Like it
45:01
Speaker 1: would have sent alarm bells ringing, because if you've been
45:04
Speaker 1: seeing doctors for what fifteen meals and not one mentioned
45:08
Speaker 1: that you have syphilis when you're getting monthly blood tests.
45:12
Speaker 1: Like the shit would hit the fan, and some people
45:17
Speaker 1: like they would be link traveling out of state and
45:21
Speaker 1: they would see another doctor and they would be like,
45:23
Speaker 1: you've got syphilists and they would get treatment. So like
45:27
Speaker 1: they weren't containing the study anyway, and like even part
45:33
Speaker 1: of their control group who didn't have syphilis to begin with,
45:36
Speaker 1: they contracted syphilis like throughout the study and they would
45:40
Speaker 1: just like swap them about. They'd be like, oh, yeah,
45:44
Speaker 1: these aren't controlled now, they're now part of the test,
45:46
Speaker 1: and it's like that's not that's not how that works.
45:49
Speaker 1: They are a separate entity because they're not lateent syphilis.
45:52
Speaker 1: They're recent. They're like primary secondary stage. Doesn't make sense
45:58
Speaker 1: in what you're trying to can they hear? And so
46:02
Speaker 1: over the years they are continuing the study with terrible
46:05
Speaker 1: record keeping and terrible organizational skills, with people just dying.
46:09
Speaker 1: They're waiting for people to die so that they can
46:12
Speaker 1: dissect them. And they keep trying to push this study
46:16
Speaker 1: further and push the studies further, even after the neuron
46:20
Speaker 1: beare codes comes out and they help sinky declaration, Like
46:23
Speaker 1: even after all this, they're trying to keep it going,
46:27
Speaker 1: and their argument is, well, we've already lost so many
46:30
Speaker 1: it would be a shame to lose all this valuable
46:34
Speaker 1: data because you know of these, you know, studies that
46:40
Speaker 1: we certainly wouldn't be able to start now. We could
46:42
Speaker 1: do them, then we wouldn't be able to start them now,
46:45
Speaker 1: you know, because of ethics and all that stuff. So
46:50
Speaker 1: you know, it'sn't our best interest to just continue, and
46:54
Speaker 1: they're trying to like keep pushing it by. So we
47:03
Speaker 1: are in the mid sixties now, and there's this venereal
47:07
Speaker 1: disease investigator, Peter Buxton. He's twenty eight years old and
47:11
Speaker 1: he's from San Francisco. So a venereal disease investigator, he's
47:14
Speaker 1: effectively a contact tracer, so he's figuring out how it
47:19
Speaker 1: moves through. So he spends most of his time trying
47:22
Speaker 1: to ensure that people who have syphilis get the appropriate treatment.
47:27
Speaker 1: And so he's in Macon County in Alabama and he,
47:32
Speaker 1: by crazy random happenstance, overhears two people arguing about the
47:38
Speaker 1: fact that somebody got a pencillan shot. Like this dude
47:42
Speaker 1: is arguing with his doctor complaining that he gave this
47:46
Speaker 1: guy penicillin and naturally, this man who's consistently trying to
47:51
Speaker 1: make people take penicillin is confused, and so he asks, like,
47:55
Speaker 1: what the fuck is this about? And you know, again
47:59
Speaker 1: they're keeping this information from you know, the people they're
48:03
Speaker 1: testing or they're studying, but they're not keeping it a
48:06
Speaker 1: secret from the medical professionals. So this doctor is just think, oh, yeah,
48:11
Speaker 1: there's this study we're just watching to see how this
48:14
Speaker 1: disease ravages these humans and waiting for them to die yep.
48:20
Speaker 1: And he is shocked and he says, fuck this for
48:25
Speaker 1: a game of soldiers, and so he immediately reports it
48:29
Speaker 1: to his like superiors. He's like, what is this going on?
48:32
Speaker 1: They're like, these guys are volunteers. The people in the
48:35
Speaker 1: study are volunteers for a thing that they don't know
48:38
Speaker 1: that they're volunteering in. And he's like that cannot be right,
48:44
Speaker 1: Like why are they doing that if there's a treatment,
48:47
Speaker 1: because we can treat them. After a couple of years,
48:52
Speaker 1: he is so dumb with his shit that he quits
48:54
Speaker 1: his job in the public health service and becomes a lawyer,
48:58
Speaker 1: after which he you know, writes to this previous superior,
49:03
Speaker 1: the guy who's in charge of this and he's like, hey,
49:06
Speaker 1: you need to stop this, and he does it by
49:12
Speaker 1: being political and sly. Sometimes you have to be a
49:15
Speaker 1: sly motherfucker, and he was. So basically he says, listen,
49:21
Speaker 1: everybody in this study is a black man. If people
49:25
Speaker 1: find out that you did this massive study on these
49:29
Speaker 1: black men and didn't provide them treatment, I mean, this
49:32
Speaker 1: is just this is just an unmitigated political disaster waiting
49:36
Speaker 1: to happen. And so the head of an aerial disease
49:39
Speaker 1: is he gets the CDC and the head of the
49:41
Speaker 1: CDC and they have this big meeting and they're like,
49:46
Speaker 1: would penicillin really help like at this stage, and so
49:51
Speaker 1: they're like, Eh, it's fine because they wouldn't benefit for
49:55
Speaker 1: it anyway, So like everything is above board. So he's
49:59
Speaker 1: reporting this clearly unethical study twice and no one's doing
50:04
Speaker 1: shit about it. So nineteen seventy two he goes full whistleblower.
50:10
Speaker 1: He's at a dinner party with a friend who happens
50:13
Speaker 1: to be a journalist, Jene Heller of the Associated Press.
50:17
Speaker 1: So he's chatting to her and he's talking about this study,
50:21
Speaker 1: and he's talking about how they're refusing treatment for these
50:25
Speaker 1: men and how all these people are affected. He's like
50:27
Speaker 1: complained to her before about it, but it's at this
50:30
Speaker 1: dinner party where she's like, oh, hang on a second,
50:34
Speaker 1: this is big news. This is serious, big news. And
50:38
Speaker 1: so finally in July nineteen seventy two, she writes this,
50:46
Speaker 1: just tell all, and the story is published and it
50:51
Speaker 1: is on the front page of the New York Times.
50:54
Speaker 1: Naturally this causes a stink, right, and this study is
50:59
Speaker 1: finally concluded a few months later in November nineteen seventy two.
51:06
Speaker 1: The study ran from nineteen thirty two to nineteen seventy two.
51:10
Speaker 1: That's forty years. And for all of this like argument
51:14
Speaker 1: of oh, they would be too ignorant to understand the
51:16
Speaker 1: yadi yadiyada, these men, a lot of these men figured
51:19
Speaker 1: something was up and they would just stop showing up
51:23
Speaker 1: for treatment. They would hide in fields, they would just
51:28
Speaker 1: avoid having to go to these appointments because they were
51:30
Speaker 1: just convinced something was wrong. They were right when some
51:35
Speaker 1: people were moving and traveled out of state, like they
51:39
Speaker 1: weren't going back there because they didn't want to have
51:42
Speaker 1: to deal with these white doctors who were clearly like
51:46
Speaker 1: allowing them to be damaged. They allowed them to suffer
51:51
Speaker 1: becauseyphilis it's it's painful. There's all these debilitating things that
51:56
Speaker 1: can do to the body. You've got the paralysis, deafness, blindness,
52:00
Speaker 1: the insanity. It can make you feel like your brain
52:02
Speaker 1: is on fire, like it is a painful, terrifying disease,
52:09
Speaker 1: and they allowed these men to suffer through it. And
52:13
Speaker 1: by the time this study had concluded, only seventy four
52:18
Speaker 1: men were still alive from the original six hundred and
52:24
Speaker 1: as far as they know, as far as we know,
52:26
Speaker 1: as far as they know, because again their record keeping
52:30
Speaker 1: was pretty shitty, one hundred and twenty eight patients had
52:34
Speaker 1: died of cephalis or complications related to cephalus. And it
52:40
Speaker 1: wasn't just them. At least forty of the wives had
52:45
Speaker 1: contracted cephalis and nineteen children had congenital syphalis like they
52:50
Speaker 1: were born with it. And we don't even have an
52:53
Speaker 1: accurate representation of those deaths because infantile deaths due to
53:00
Speaker 1: congenital syphilis it wouldn't have been the first thing people
53:03
Speaker 1: have checked off, and because infant mortality rates would have
53:07
Speaker 1: been higher, they might not have even considered it. So
53:12
Speaker 1: we will never know the full grasp of the people
53:15
Speaker 1: affected by this study and why their lives we're seeing
53:23
Speaker 1: as expendable. These people were disposable. They were just numbers
53:27
Speaker 1: in a box. Unsurprisingly massive public outrage, the NAACP, or
53:35
Speaker 1: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, straight
53:40
Speaker 1: off the bat launched a class action lawsuit against the
53:44
Speaker 1: US Public Health Service on behalf of the participants. I
53:48
Speaker 1: hate the word participant, because they didn't pullingly participate the subjects,
53:53
Speaker 1: the subjects of the study and their family members, like
53:58
Speaker 1: on their behalf. And in nineteen seventy four, the US
54:02
Speaker 1: Public Health Service settled out of court for ten million dollars,
54:08
Speaker 1: which in today's money is like sixty five to maybe
54:13
Speaker 1: seventy million, which is to be split amongst the descendants
54:18
Speaker 1: and whatnot, which has a lot of money, but it's
54:21
Speaker 1: also not a lot of money when you think about
54:24
Speaker 1: what the fuck they put these people through. Oh. Also,
54:27
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four, the government on the lowdown they
54:34
Speaker 1: agreed to give free medical care to everybody in the
54:37
Speaker 1: study and their families, Like, yeah, that's the least you
54:43
Speaker 1: can fucking do. And the FACTI they were like, we're
54:47
Speaker 1: just gonna try and keep this quiet, like no, I'd
54:49
Speaker 1: be shouting from the fucking rooftops. But they don't get
54:54
Speaker 1: an official apology until nineteen ninety seven, when Bill Clinton
54:59
Speaker 1: is president. It's only then they get an apology. And
55:02
Speaker 1: at this point there were only seven survivors of the
55:06
Speaker 1: study left, but they got to hear that apology, which
55:09
Speaker 1: I think is something at least. I mean, getting the
55:12
Speaker 1: president of the country to apologize, you know, for the
55:16
Speaker 1: horror you went through during your life. It's a little something,
55:21
Speaker 1: I guess. I feel like that's not enough, though, I
55:23
Speaker 1: feel like that's still not enough, And like, here's the
55:25
Speaker 1: thing as well. When scientists and doctors do unethical, dodgy,
55:31
Speaker 1: fucking shit like this, this is why people don't trust you.
55:34
Speaker 1: This is why conspiracy theorists and militants can come in
55:39
Speaker 1: and just spew the nonsense and people will eat it
55:42
Speaker 1: up because the distrust is already there, because you've proven it.
55:46
Speaker 1: You've already shown that you don't care. You let people
55:49
Speaker 1: suffer when you could have helped them, because you wouldn't
55:54
Speaker 1: have done that to a group of white people. You
55:56
Speaker 1: wouldn't have like, it wouldn't have been a thing. So
56:01
Speaker 1: not only do you already have this power imbalance with
56:04
Speaker 1: this vulnerable community. But you just continuously fuck things up consecutively,
56:10
Speaker 1: one after another in a row. So many opportunities to
56:15
Speaker 1: just cure, to step in, to help to provide aid,
56:19
Speaker 1: so many chances over several decades, and it was never
56:23
Speaker 1: taken because I think if unless the whistleblower came and
56:30
Speaker 1: they were forced to take accountability, they would have just
56:34
Speaker 1: let it happen and then swept it under the rug.
56:37
Speaker 1: They would never have reported and we wouldn't know until
56:40
Speaker 1: someone dug out the information, which would have been tough
56:43
Speaker 1: because again, a lot of no, it's nonsense, a lot
56:46
Speaker 1: of it's mixed up and messed about and around the place,
56:49
Speaker 1: and like the replacing participants, they're losing stuff and at
56:54
Speaker 1: the end of the day, the only real data they have,
56:59
Speaker 1: And why shit you not? This is the conclusion in
57:03
Speaker 1: Layman's terms of course, but this is the conclusion people
57:07
Speaker 1: who have sephaloss are more likely to die earlier than
57:11
Speaker 1: people who do not have sephalis. Well, if it's untreated
57:15
Speaker 1: like that is that is all the information they were
57:19
Speaker 1: able to gather from this study. So they conducted a
57:22
Speaker 1: horrific long term experiment on vulnerable black people for their
57:30
Speaker 1: entire lives, waiting for them to die. That's it. They
57:34
Speaker 1: were waiting for them to die off so then they
57:37
Speaker 1: would never have to deal with it. Absolutely shocking, and
57:41
Speaker 1: they wonder why people don't trust medical professionals. That's why
57:45
Speaker 1: we need people to advocate. That's why you need it here.
57:48
Speaker 1: And I know that's easy for me to say as
57:51
Speaker 1: and I know that that's easy for me to say
57:53
Speaker 1: as the whitest white person. I mean, my foundation shade
57:56
Speaker 1: is Victorian ghost, Like it's easy for me to say this,
58:00
Speaker 1: you know, But no, I know, I talk about bullshit
58:03
Speaker 1: science all the time. I do. And it's not so
58:06
Speaker 1: much the science that's the issue, But the problem tends
58:11
Speaker 1: to be like at the core of it, white men,
58:16
Speaker 1: like infecting bias into those science Like that's it. Like
58:23
Speaker 1: that's the core issue. And this continues, and it's why
58:27
Speaker 1: we have so many issues today. And that is I
58:31
Speaker 1: guess I'm going to run on forever if I don't stop.
58:34
Speaker 1: But that is the Tuskegee Syphilist study. Now, enjoy is
58:41
Speaker 1: not the white word. I hope you were educated and
58:45
Speaker 1: not to annoyed my rantings, But yes, I guess it's
58:50
Speaker 1: recommendation time, so I'm going to skip right to recommendations now.
58:56
Speaker 1: For reading, I'm going to recommend that Peckham Boy by
59:00
Speaker 1: Kenny m Afadon. I bet you have fucked up his name,
59:03
Speaker 1: how an't I? I bet you. For watching, I'm going
59:08
Speaker 1: to suggest Chewing Gum. It's very funny, go watch it.
59:13
Speaker 1: And for listening, scam Goddess. And with that, I'm gonna
59:19
Speaker 1: say good night, Adios, Oliver, where as Emma Friends bye
59:23
Speaker 1: bye