Why Is The Tuskegee Still Relevant Today

Today, healthcare has advanced through extreme procedures in the past that the United States government will never get to make-up for. Innocents were tortured in hopes that they were leading towards finding a cure for their diseases. The Tuskegee Experiment is one of the first documented experiments in the United States that fully admits to the wrong doings they performed to African Americans in their program. The Tuskegee Experiment was, by definition, the same as a clinical trial in today’s society, but that changed quickly. In 1932, the United States told nearly 400 African Americans that they would get free treatment for their disease. The disease was a form of syphilis that was an epidemic in Macon County. The U.S. government took advantage
of these men as they were all poor, uneducated, and black. Once the government had these men, the men were used like lab rats that they could replace whenever necessary. At first, the government was giving the men a medicine that was somewhat working, but the medicine was considered toxic and had to be used in low dosages.
The medicine was somewhat working at first, but when funding never became solid, the government employees decided to make the trial into a test of syphilis and how syphilis effects African Americans. In all matters, this trial went from trying to treat African Americans for a disease to testing the African American’s like guinea pigs and letting their disease progressively get worse and worse. Later, the government admitted that there were never any real human protections in the whole experiment and admitted that even the standard treatment, penicillin, was withheld from the test
subjects. Eventually, Bill Clinton made a formal apology for all the wrongdoings and hoped that this would in effect ease some tension from African Americans not completely trusting the medical system, and the government in general. Since the Tuskegee Experiment, there has been laws, companies, and government bans placed to stop anything like this to happen again. Even though the government has put forth maximum effort to stop this from ever happening again, the truth is, the only thing that can fix the fear in the back of everyone’s mind, is time. Charles A.
Walker wrote “Lest we forget: The Tuskegee Experiment” to inform the public about what the government did to African Americans in the 1930s, and what the government is doing today in hopes of righting their wrongs. Walker attempted to bridge the gap between the affected and non-affected by writing article that shows the evil of the experiment and the good the government is doing in attempt to apologize. Walker used statistics proportionally throughout the essay to maintain a balanced, unopinionated essay. Walker did a magnificent job of keeping his personal beliefs out of the paper. Most people would be livid about the fact that African Americans were tested like animals and practically tortured by the government, but instead, Walker chose the point of view that is solely informative in efforts to possibly bridge the gap between the government and primarily African Americans. On a daily basis, ignorant racists claim that racism is dead and was never an actual threat to African Americans, but this article alone proves that African Americans were not only abused, but denied the basic rights that all humans
have. I was personally livid when reading this article because this happened only 85 years ago. 85 years is a lifetime in most retrospects, which means that my grandparents were born shortly after this. That is not near as long ago as it seems, especially because this means that 85 years ago the government was okay with the abusive things the government did to African Americans. It is hard to fathom that men and women could look at someone of a different skin color and think, “those people with dark skin are not worthy to walk the same ground as me.” I personally believe that the government cannot apologize and the apology get accepted by everyone because the occasion was so awful to start with in the first place. “Lest we forget: The Tuskegee Experiment” focused on the horrible things done to African Americans and how the government strived to try and fix it from apologizing in front of a worldwide platform to making new laws that ban anything like The Tuskegee Experiment from ever occurring again. Walker was superb at getting his point across and staying short and to the point to let the reader that the situation was bad, but the government is trying the best it can in order to right there wrongs and unite the nation as one. We see the government trying to fix everything now, but now the question is can African Americans, or even the population in general, ever trust the government again?