Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Thomas Parran, Surgeon General oversaw the Tuskegee Experiment

From PBS NewsHour,

Dr. Thomas Parran Jr., whose name graces the main building of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, has also been called an architect of the syphilis experiments on black men and women in Tuskegee, Ala. While he was surgeon general, he was also aware that U.S. public health researchers were intentionally infecting with syphilis Guatemalan people who were mentally ill or in prison, in the name of research. 

The Tuskegee Experiment wasn't the only experiment that Parran was involved with.  There was also the Guatemalan syphilis. experiments, 1946-1948, a full 4 to 6 years after penicillin was manufactured.  Oh, my God. 

Daniel Jacobson, a graduate student in social work and the president of the Latin American Graduate Organization of Students at Pitt, said Parran’s role in dehumanizing Latinos through the Guatemala syphilis experiments should not be lost in the debate.

Jacobson said participants in those experiments were devalued and even preyed upon. The United States apologized to Guatemala for the episode in 2010, but it wasn’t until the following year that Parran’s role in the tests received wide attention.

“This is a marginalized group,” Jacobson said, referring to the people used in the Guatemala experiments. “No one is going to care about these people.” 

Apparently, penicillin was quite effective at treating syphilis.

 

 

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