Have you heard commentators on television acting as if it was outrageous for Rev. Jeremiah Wright to insinuate that the U.S. Government planted AIDS in the Black community?
Perhaps Joe Scarbourgh, Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan can take a moment to remember that the U.S. Government conducted an experiment on 399 Black men in the late stages of syphilis from 1932 thru 1972. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,” their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all.
The data for the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death.
Perhaps we can bridge the chasm that is race relations in our country if we are willing to look deeper than the Fox News sound bite? Some 'urban legends' are based in fact.
