Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Tuskegee Study and the apology by former President Clinton
The Tuskegee Syphilis study was a study on a select amount of Black males in Macon county, Alabama. The study was to monitor the progression of syphilis throughout African American males. The study lasted more than forty years and even after a cure was found the infected were lied to and denied treatment. In his speech President Clinton apologizes on behalf of himslef, the government, and the American people for the absolute disregard of human rights. He says that this study has significantly reduced the confidence and trust in government funded healthcare programs and that needs to be fixed. He also says that there will be considerable regulation of human rights in medical studies so that this will never happen again. I believe this was a genuine apology on his and our governments part for the study and its ramifications. I think that President Obama being elected will play a huge role in helping to restore the confidence that African Americans have in our government and its associated programs.
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I agree with you that it seemed like a very genuine apology from President Clinton. Hopefully it really will do something to help with trust of government and health officials in the black community. I think that when reminded of this study it discredits the U.S. public health care system a lot, especially in the minds of African Americans. I do believe that Obama will help restore faith even more so as well but I think even with Obama as president we will still have a ways to go. I think that if we start seeing more black people in professions in government and in health care then that will lead to more faith in the system. Maybe eventually everyone will be able to fully trust health care and maybe all will be treated equally. I don't see this happening right away but we are definitely headed in the right direction. I do think that Bill Clinton did start us in the right direction and his speech was very moving.
ReplyDeleteI think you are both right in saying that it was a step in the right direction for President Bull Clinton to issue a public apology. What rubs me the wrong way is that even though new laws we created that those running the study still were never punished. Let alone they didn't issue an apology. Granted most of them had passed on but do they really get off the hook that easy? I think it is here where the largest mistrust issues arise. We all know that we are humans and that ultimately there is going to be some kind of corruption but how we deal with it is the true question. Obama is so fresh and so completely different than our past presidents that I feel he is going to look at our country in a different perspective. I think we can all relate to that both black, white, hispanic, asian ect...I feel like we have reached a new age and we can all begin to feel like equals. Hopefully this can trigger more trust in our government and less corruption.
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