Rev. Wright's Tuskegee Error: Real History Says Otherwise

This was an interesting article I found on Townhall.com, regarding the misinformation about Tuskegee. The Tuskegee that Rev. Wright alluded to in his, “Based on this Tuskegee experiment ... I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” comment. That was his response to being asked if he truly believed the Government created AIDS to kill blacks.

The article was written by Jonah Goldberg and titled, "Tall Tales About Tuskegee ." And after actually digging into some history myself on this topic, it appears Wright, was WRONG. Pardon the pun. Yes, Tuskegee it turns out, was a despicable act. It denied the humanity of a group of people. It was misleading, as they were told they were being treated, but were merely being studied. I can fully comprehend why blacks have a sincere distrust towards our government because of it.

But they should dislike, hate, whatever, for the historically correct reasons. Not because of the concoctions of a racist preacher.

If you ask blacks in America today, if they believe the government did invent AIDS as a form of genocide against them, believe it or not, upwards of a third of them will say YES. As those that believe that, will also believe the inaccurate version of Tuskegee. So here's the short version of what happened way back when;

Public Health researchers back in 1932 wanted to study syphilis. Since black males seemed more prone to it than white males, they chose them for the study. Almost 400 black males who were ALREADY infected and in the tertiary-stage of the disease were selected, as they were no longer contagious. Keep in mind the year 1932, as this was PRIOR TO the advent and availability of penicillin.

So they studied these guys for about 40 years. And when standardized penicillin treatments did become available in the 40's to 50's, the researchers weren't sure it would have helped anyways. In fact, some believed it may cause the subjects of the study further harm or possibly even death trying to treat the decades long infection.

There is no doubt of, but much debate over, how much racism may have been involved. But it remains undisputed by scholars that genocide was not a factor. Nor was the desire to infect the population of blacks as a whole.

There's a lot more detail in Goldberg's article, which I recommend you read to catch up on the, "Wrong of Wright."