Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Was this an attempt to "get rid" of the minority in Tuskegee?
It was said that the reason for this study was to record the history of syphilis in blacks. Most of the people being tested were black share croppers who were poor and illiterate... i dont see how these men wouldnt be considered a minority in this case. It isnt just a coincidence that they didnt ask wealthy, males who own lots of property to contribute in the expirement. Racism is definately a key factor in everything going on in this study, no doubt about that. Tuskegee wasnt only known as the "Black Belt" for its rich soil, but also for the number of black sharecroppers in this region. So this gets me thinking, did the people who ran this study not like black sharecroppers being the backbone of Tuskegee? Was this expirement an accident or did they actually mean for this many black men to die because of the way they were overpopulating Tuskegee? It wasnt as if these men were asked and if they said no they just moved on to the next person.. many of these men were bribed with "medical exams, meals on exam days, rides to and from the clinic, and free treatment for minor ailments." So this proves that the intent of the study was wrong to begin with, becasue if none of these men were signing up for the exams bribing them is clearly unethical. So the question still stands at was the study originally meant to get rid of the black sharecroppers who began to over populate Tuskegee?
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I definitely think they were trying to eliminate the black population in Tuskegee. I mean what was the point of this experiment and if there was a point why wouldn't they treat the men when they found the cure?? The men were denied of the opportunity and most of them died. Not only this but they weren't informed that they could possibly die during this experiment they thought they were getting better with the "aspirin" they were given along with other medications that had absolutely no effect. So yes I think this was in fact an attempt to get rid of the black population.
ReplyDeleteI dont necessarily think that the scientists were trying to eliminate black population in Tuskegee. I feel that this experiment was misguided by racism because attempting to elminae an entire race from a certain area seems highly unrealistic. It seems that the experiment was more like a colloaboration of sadistic scientists who got together and decided that it would be 'interesting' to watch a syphilis's effects on people and they chose to target the black population for racial reasons. This in a way is comparable to the way Nazi doctors enjoyed conducting pointless experiments on twins. The doctors werent really trying to eliminate twins off the planet; they simply enjoyed watching them suffer.
ReplyDeleteI too don't think that the scientists were purposefully trying to cut down the black population in Tuskegee. The black citizens of that town, like you said were of poor working class. Any "rich white folk" in the right mind would know that taking out the poor working class out of a society calls for expensive labor, which nobody wants. That is the reason many people are in favor of letting immigrants in the US because they work for less.
ReplyDeleteThe only reason i can think of that the scientists would choose these men is because they made the most sense to test. First off, the experiment was meant to be for black people specifically. So out of all the black people in the town, who would common sense tell you to pick? The educated, beneficial to society black man, or the poor working class that you can find anywhere?
I feel that they were still targeting the black people in the community because of how many black people they took for the study. Yes i somewhat agree with what Mustafa said with they didnt want to take away all of them because then they wouldnt have no poor working class. But i feel they still were targeting them because the scientests didnt explaine it real well to the people they were experimenting on all they told them was little things like they had bad blood and they needed treatment. The people in the community were just trying to get rid of some of the black people but not all of them so that they can still have a poor working class
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