RUMS Review Vol. VIII Issue I - January 2023

43
Viruses have
infected and
wreaked havoc in
human populations
for centuries, as
nature has always
used pathogens for
expedient
population control.
However, scientific understanding has
since weaponised preventative
medicine, such as vaccines, to shield
us against the pathogenic war nature
fights against us. The most recent
example of this phenomenon was in
the coronavirus pandemic. But while
most hailed the discoveries of Pfizer
and AstraZeneca as their gateway
back to a normal life, there were some
communities who were more hesitant
than others to access these
vaccinations, most notably the BAME
community.
A poll that was commissioned in
December 2020 by the Royal Society
of Public Health found that out of 199
respondents, 79% of white
respondents said they would accept
the vaccines compared to only 57% of
the respondents from BAME
backgrounds. This glaring disparity
between the two groups was a huge
cause for concern and so there was
much conjecture about the cause of
this reluctance. The narrative that was
propagated by mainstream media was
that these communities had less
education, sometimes depicting them
as illiterate and ignorant. However,
this view is superficial and fails to
acknowledge how the history of
people of colour accessing healthcare
is blotted with numerous instances of
exploitation and experimentation, and
how these events have left scars
which continue to repel them from
accessing healthcare and vaccines in
current day.
One of the most prominent cases of
this was the Tuskegee syphilis study.
In 1932 , ideas of social Darwinism (a
pseudoscience that portrayed people
of colour as biologically inferior to
white people) were pervasive in the
population. It was with this societal
backdrop of scientific racism that the
syphilis study was conducted, as
scientists wished to investigate
whether black people were more
predisposed to contracting STDs.
Therefore, in 1932 600 African-
American men were recruited from
Alabama to partake in a study. These
men were lied to and told that they
were receiving treatment for “bad
blood” and administered fake
ointments while the scientists kept
track of how many of them contracted
syphilis over a period of time. Despite
their deception being utterly unethical
and unjustifiable from all accounts,
the scientists legitimised their actions
by using the excuse that the
experiment was merely a “study in
nature” which observed the
progression of a disease in a
community, so they weren’t actively
doing any harm.
However, far from watching the
natural progression of syphilis from a
detached standpoint, the researchers
instead intervened heavily. Over the
course of the trial many participants
did contract syphilis and could have
been given life saving antibiotics like
penicillin. However, the scientists
directly intervened to prevent the
participants from accessing
treatment, and even went as far as to
provide doctors with a list of subjects
not to treat! Therefore, the study
essentially became a death sentence
for many participants who suffered
preventable deaths. Overall, it was
found that during the study’s 40-year
period, 128 men died of syphilis, 40 of
their wives were infected and 19
children even acquired congenital
syphilis.
This had long-standing ramifications
for the black community as it planted
the seeds of distrust, which have
since grown into generational trauma
and to this day manifests as suspicion
and hesitancy towards healthcare
providers. Indeed, a study done by
Marcella Alsan at the Stanford
Medical School argued that by 1980
the Tuskegee study was responsible
for 1/3 of the life expectancy gap
between older black and white men.
However, it is easy to argue that
these sorts of studies are a thing of
the past, and that these communities
should be expected to heal and move
on. But even in modern day history we
see examples of people of colour
continuing to be exploited, for
example the CIA’s intelligence work in
2010, just over a decade ago.