We’re Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Tuskegee Experiment. That Matters for Vaccinating Black Americans

March 8, 2021 at 12:00 PM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:22 Speaker 3: 00:32 Speaker 2: 00:48 Speaker 3: 01:03 Speaker 2: 01:11 Speaker 3: 01:27 Speaker 2: 01:40 Speaker 4: 01:45 Speaker 2: 01:49 Speaker 4: 01:56 Speaker 2: 02:03 Speaker 4: 02:13 Speaker 2: 02:17 Speaker 4: 02:23 Speaker 2: 02:26 Speaker 4: 02:40 Speaker 2: 02:44 Speaker 4: 02:58 Speaker 2: 03:00 Speaker 5: 03:23 Speaker 2: 03:29 Speaker 5: 03:53 Speaker 2: 03:55 Speaker 5: 04:05 Speaker 2: 04:09 Speaker 5: 04:22 Speaker 2: 04:38 Speaker 6: 05:01 Speaker 2: 05:22 Speaker 6: 05:46 Speaker 2: 05:50 Speaker 7: 06:07 Speaker 2: 06:26 Speaker 7: 06:47 Speaker 2: 06:51 Surveys show that black Californians are a lot more reluctant to get the Corona virus vaccine than white Californians. But most surveys don't ask respondents why the California reports health correspondent, April Demboski reports. One hypothesis politicians and medical experts have widely embraced, may not be as widespread in the community For months. Health officials, politicians and journalists have been invoking the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study to explain why black people are skeptical of the vaccine. The Tuskegee experiment is a terrible stain on the soul of this nature because of things like the Tuskegee experience to ski experiments, to ski experiments, the Tuskegee studies remember to ski is this the federal government trying to fool you again. This bother Maxine Toler, she's 72 and lives near Los Angeles. She talks to her friends and neighbors about the vaccine all the time. She's black, they're black, hardly anyone brings up Tuskegee. And she says, the handful that do are fuzzy on the details. If you asked him well, what was it about and why do you feel like it would impact your receiving the vaccine? Now they can't even tell you Most people. She talks to cite very current reasons for not wanting the vaccine religious beliefs or safety concerns, or they think the former president brushed it through for political gain Toler calls, the Tuskegee references, a distraction irrelevant. Even It's almost the opposite of Tuskegee because they were being denied treatment, right? And this is like, you know, we're, we're pushing people forward, like go and get this vaccine A little history review for all of us. From the PBS documentary that deadly deception Was called the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the Negro. It began in 1932 with about 400 black men in Alabama who had syphilis, a bacterial STD. It was authorized by the U S public health service paid for, with taxpayers dollars and conducted by government doctors. Some people believe that researchers injected the men with syphilis, but that's not true. They already had it though. Researchers never told them men. The doctor said, they'd come to cure bad blood. And they never intended to cure them. Even when a cure became widely available in the 1940s, The war period saw the rise of a wonder drug penicillin. The study was about tracking the effects of untreated syphilis on the body. And doctors were determined to make it to their end point autopsy. They withheld treatment and continued the study for another 25 years. The research has pushed on undeterred By the time the study was exposed and shut down in 1970 to 128, men had died from syphilis or related complications. 40 wives and 19 children were infected With a horrific history like This. You might assume that black people would never want to participate in clinical research ever again, or the next three decades. Various books, articles and films repeated this assumption as gospel. That was a false assumption. Dr. Rubin Warren is in charge of bioethics at Tuskegee university and is a former assistant director of minority health at the CDC. He's originally from LA. The hesitancy is there, but the refusal is not. And that's the important difference. Starting in the mid nineties, some researchers went on the hunt for evidence that black people would refuse to be part of research. Over the next dozen years, they completed 17 studies, including surveys of thousands of people. The conclusions were definitive while black people were more wary of participating in research compared to white people, they were equally willing to actually participate hesitant. Yes, but not refusal. Tuskegee was not the deal breaker. Everyone thought it was more than says, this did not go overwhelm at the CDC. And in other research circles, Much of it indicted and contradicted what the government said. Now researchers have to confront the real problem. Many of them never invited black people to participate in their studies in the first place when they did, they didn't try very hard to ski was a scapegoat. That was the excuse that they used to not include black and, and other communities of color in the research enterprise. If I don't want to go to the extra energy resources to include the population, I can simply say they were not interested in. If you Warren says the same presumptions that were made about clinical research are resurfacing around the coronavirus vaccine. A lot of hesitancy is being confused for refusal. And so a lot of the work that needs to be done to get the vaccine to black communities is not being done. USC sociologists, Karen Lincoln believes Tuskegee is once again, being used as a scapegoat, It's an excuse. And I do think that if you continue to use it as a way of explaining why many African-Americans are hesitant, it all, it almost absolves you of having to learn more, do more involve other people admit that racism is actually a thing today. The memory of Tuskegee is still very present for some people, but Lincoln says it's the contemporary failures of the healthcare system that are causing more distrust than events of the past. It's what happened to me yesterday, not what happened 50 years ago. African-American seniors complained to her all the time about doctors dismissing their concerns or nurses answering the call button for their white roommate, more than them. And the word travels fast. When people have negative experiences, they Like the Facebook live video of Susan Moore that went viral more a black doctor with COVID filmed herself, her hospital bed, an oxygen tube in her nose. She tells the camera how she had to beg her physician to give her REM Deza veer the drug that speeds up recovery from COVID. He said, nah, you don't need it. You're not even short of breath. I said, yes, I am. He further stated you should just go home right now. I put forward and I maintain if I was white, it wouldn't have to go through that. Dr. Moore died two weeks later. It's stories like these, that stoke mistrust, Dr. Rubin Warren says, if you want to shift that, if you want black people to trust doctors and trust the vaccine, don't blame them for distrusting it. The obligation is on the health institutions to first show that they are trustworthy, Prove yourself trustworthy and trust will follow. Warren says black people will participate when institutions and officials take responsibility and stop making excuses.

By KPBS Public Media

Surveys show that Black Californians are a lot more reluctant to get the coronavirus vaccine than white Californians. But most surveys don’t ask respondents why.