Race, Medicine, & Society Notes - March 6, 2018

Race, Medicine, & Society Notes - March 6, 2018

Discussion Questions:

• What was the larger social world in which the Study took place, and why is that important?
• How do you evaluate the participation of each stakeholder in the study?

The Study: 1930s

Syphilis study happens within the time of Jim Crow laws and the Black Freedom struggle

Southern States created forms of legislation that limited African Americans (not full citizenship)

Lynching

1890 - 1967 (last recorded lynching)

Lynching Rate: 3 times a week

1880 - 1950: 326 Lynchings in the state of Alabama (not the highest amount) (Rate: 1 lynching every two weeks)

Scottsboro Boys: Group of African American teenagers on train, accused of raping a white woman on the train, put on trial. Major National Story because boys were clearly not guilty.

Study happens in period of extreme poverty (Great Depression)

• Extreme poverty in rural parts of the US
• African American sharecroppers excluded from New Deal legislation

African American labor = backbone of the South

• Had to be kept in the workforce

Stakeholders:

• Public Health Service (PHS) Doctors (Wegner, Clark, Moore, Cutler)
• African American physicians
• Eunice Rivers
• Patients, Wives, and Kids

Intersectionality- (ex: race, class, gender, region, education, etc.)

Dr. Eugene Dibble, Head of Tuskegee Institute

• supported the Study P153

• climbed hospital hierarchy to become head of hospital
• p153 bottom, described as nice man for calming patients. He was African American which led many patients to feel more comfortable with him
• came from Tuskegee just like the other doctors
• held the view that he was helping the African American community, however had some views that made him seem brainwashed (Biological differences between races) (P161-162?)
• 1930s through late 20th century, why didn’t the study begin to disperse? Seemed less organized and less effective as time went on.
• Tried to balance race and science
• Participated to try to find cure for African Americans
• Had to continuously support the study because he could be easily disposable because of his race
• In his mind, he was doing good for his race as a whole

“Race man” - dedicated to the upliftment of the African American race. Upper class of African Americans. (used a lot in the 1920s and old times)

Eunice Rivers

• African American Nurse
• Didn’t think she was doing bad until eventually realizing
• View of her: Traitor to race vs innocent nurse
• Stayed within the study because she provided good care, figured that a white nurse would provide less quality care to incoming patients
• Middle Ground: Patients would talk to her instead of white doctors in the hopes that she would go talk to the white doctors
• Rivers taking Mother role
• Rivers picked so that more victims would join in the Study because of Rivers appearing as a motherly figure

Reading Notes:

• New Deal Racism
• Rural African Americans hit hard by the Great Depression
• Made little money from crops (Reverby 114)
• Public Health Service (PHS) was studying rural African Americans. African Americans that became involved in the Study believed that they would receive treatment. PHS collected tissue samples and sent them off to labs for testing.
• Disagreements on the cause of deaths of patients
• People dying of “syphilis” (African Americans dying for a reason and then the doctors defaulting to blaming the death on Syphilis instead of the real cause)
• “Racial assumptions are central to medicine and how easily medical uncertainty masks ethical blindness” (Reverby 119)
• Worsening health conditions of patient, but doctor says the patient is normal (in this example, heart enlargement was the worsening health condition) (Reverby 126)
• Stopping infections but not curing
• Doctors were still trying to defend themselves even up to the 1970s”
• Doctors claimed they were helping the black race (Reverby 148)
• Sacrifices (The Control Group) had to be made (Reverby 149)
• Location didn’t matter (the scientists would’ve picked “a bunch of hillbillies from West Virginia.”)
• Doctors believed that diseases affected the two different races differently (Dibble)
• Bad reactions to Mercury treatment (Reverby 171)

Paper due a week from Thursday!