SOMETHING I SAID
By DWIGHT HOBBES
You couldn”™t throw the COVID-19 or any other number vaccine on me in a bucket of water. Can you say Tuskegee Experiment? The research for which African Americans were used by the United States Public Health Service as lab rats to explore the effects of syphilis. That was far back as 1932 but medical science hasn”™t progressed so far today that we don”™t have one Dr. Jean-Paul Mira, chief of intensive care at the Cochin Hospital in Paris, France. In April of last year, he asked the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research director Camille Locht on French television channel LCI, “Shouldn”™t we be doing this study in Africa where there are no masks, no treatment, no intensive care, a little bit like we did in certain AIDS studies or with prostitutes?”
Locht responded, “You are right. We are thinking of a parallel study in Africa to use [an] approach with the BCG placebos.” Placebos. The same ruse this government perpetrated, in a study that went on until 1972, years with not one infected patient being treated with penicillin despite that by 1947, the antibiotic was widely available and had become the standard treatment for the disease. The program killed 128 of its 600 participants letting them die from syphilis or related complications. Mira and Locht might well have got away with similarly disregarding black humanity but for the outrage on social media condemning their comments. There is no telling how many men, women and children would have died a miserable death as Mira and Locht blithely went on about their business. Admittedly, there”™s no evidence that US doctors will follow that lead. No smoking gun. On the other hand, there”™s also no reason to believe they won”™t, the medical profession conducting another Tuskegee-style experiment and simply being smarter about keeping it under their hats.
Time after time this country has demonstrated an entrenched, indeed institutionalized contempt for black life. Any of us who doesn”™t at least think twice about taking that needle simply isn”™t awake.
Vaccine, my Aunt Fanny. I”™ll take my chances.
