Michelle Obama's pander

The Tuskegee experiment started with the government offering free health care! Wouldn't you think black America would run, and rightfully so, at the thought of hearing those words again?
David

This presumes that Michelle Obama sees her job as that of spreading the truth. That is the way you and I would look at her job, but I think it is a mistake to project our vision of her job onto her. Her statements indicate that she may very well see her job as spreading the sense of victimization among blacks, in which case, what she did is entirely consistent. You and I just don't understand her actions because we don't appreciate the idea that victimization is good for the nation. We probably don't appreciate the idea that Michelle Obama is good for the nation either.

I'm not a fan of MO, but if the program would have allowed some girls to receive placebo instead of the actual vaccination, I think she did the right thing. The concept of using high school girs as research subjects should have strict controls around it and there's nothing in this article that details how the girls would be protected.

The notorious Tuskagee study was started under Democrat President Roosevelt and continued under Truman, JFK and LBJ

But if Michelle Obama had been spreading the truth as part of her job as "outreach" from this hospital, it would have become quickly apparent to all that they had no need for a $300,000 a year "outreach" person since the truth would have changed the black community from victims to mere citizens.

You only need "outreach" when dealing with victims. The truth would have eliminated the need for Michelle Obama to exist in a $300,000 a year job. So of course she promoted all the conspiracies and untruths, it meant money and this was before she discovered it wasn't good to be part of the "money culture".

Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online has an excellent writeup on Tuskegee.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Njg4MzdkYTQ0YjZjYWUwOWQzOTg0OWVmYWVjMDY5ZTM=

Interesting, although MO was correct that the government let 399 men with the disease be untreated some did not know they had the disease, these men spread it to others.

However, the government did not inject them with the disease. But I can see how this falsehood spread through the grapevine. If the black community leaders are spreading incorrect information they should stop!

Regarding her salary... I can't believe an idiot like Shawn Hannity can get $100,000 for a speaking gig and a hate slinger like Ann Coulter can get $25,000.

Casey: First, you can't test a treatment designed for teenage girls on old men. Second, there are many stages in testing. This could have been a late-stage test to evaluate immediate reactions to the vaccine with the expectation that all participants would be vaccinated after a certain time. The NYT article gave no information that permits us to judge the ethics of the case for ourselves. It was knee-jerk Tuskegee-bad Michelle-good garbage that should insult the intelligence of every reader. It doesn't even say whether black teens were a target group for the testing or whether largely black schools Michelle referred to were only a part of a much wider group. Once again, the press tries to tell us what to think instead of providing us with real information.

The only reason why MO had a salary increase from $100K per year to $300K per year was BO being elected to US Senate. If you do not believe me just check the timing of this event and ask yourself if you ever heard of such increases when a person continues to work in the same place in the same position.

American Tinker : Of course you can't test this on men... but you can test it on adult women.

Using children as a test should be done very carefully. I don't see any explanation given of why using children was necessary.

I won't presume to know MO's reasons for disallowing this HPV vaccination . However , in my view it seems that the main issue would be perception that the school system or parents would have to this vaccination. If my daugher's school sent me a letter asking permission to use her as a test subject for a vaccine that will prevent her from contracting what is essentially an STD, I would (as a Christian) be up in arms. I would see it in the same context if they handed her condoms and told her to be "safe". No thank you.

As for the Tuskeegee experiment, it was ethically wrong for the government to allow these men to go untreated, allowing their disease to progress and possibly spread throughout their communities and families. When Ms. Feldman paints the research as being "benificient" she is correct in the same way the suffering of a white rat or chimpanzee can lead to medical breakthroughs that benefit the general public. If we don't mind the suffering of the test subject, of course any research can be justified. Just ask Josef Mengele. Would one ever state that his experiments had a redeeming value because of the data that was gathered could be used later to somehow benefit humanity? The difference is merely the degree of suffering of the test subjects, or even more troubling, how close one relates to the sufferers. To some, it may not seem as tragic if a few black sharecroppers go blind, get organ, brain or spinal damage or spread the like to their families. At one time our leaders in government held this belief and Tuskeegee was an example. Questioning black distrust for government is like questioning a German Jew's refusal to identify themselves as such on the latest census. There may be no "real" basis for fear, but the generational memory of oppression/terror is too strong, raw and recent. Much is made about how far we have come in race relations, and i agree. But realize the truth that just one generation ago lynchings were a common occurrence. Let's not revise the horrors of history so as to belittle the arguements of fools like Wright and Pleigher. The facts do it well enough.

"the specter of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment of the mid-20th century, when white doctors let hundreds of black men go untreated to study the disease."

So where's the lie? Ms. Obama didn't say the government injected syphilis into the Tuskegee Group.
There's a very legitimate issue about what scientific trials are meant to do. Do they inject girls with the HPV vaccine and sit back and watch what happens or will they be proactive and treat the girls if there are unexpected consequences?
It's not a pander question. Just how many control groups are there? One or two? One would be the group that got a placebo. A second might be the group that got the vaccine but was left alone to study long-term consequences. People should know what their options are.

Hector:"When Ms. Feldman paints the research as being "benificient" she is correct in the same way the suffering of a white rat or chimpanzee can lead to medical breakthroughs that benefit the general public"

Re-read what I said again, please. I said at the outset the motives for the experiment were beneficent. Existing treatments were often toxic and the test was to see if good medical care alone would produce better effects than that toxic treatment. Of course, once penicillin was known to treat the disease effectively, the experiment should have ended, not continued on for decades without notification to the subjects and treatment.

There is nothing in the article that indicates the girls in this study were going to be forced in any way to participate. Rather that the hospital, one of the finest in the country and certainly adherent to the best biomedical ethical practices were offering them an opportunity to test a vaccine which if it worked would save thousands of lives each year.

The reason using children was necessary is because that is the population that the vaccine is given to. It is a mistake to believe drugs and vaccines are going to work the same in the different races. Even between men and women. There have been loud calls for testing drugs not just on white men between 20 and 60, but on a more diverse population. Unfortunately, the more diverse population doesn't want to have drugs and vaccines tested on them. But if they don't, we won't really know the effects of these procedures on them until they are given to them by their doctors, and the reactions start coming in. Then Big Pharma will be blamed for not knowing these drugs were going to cause this reaction. Or worse, they will be accused of knowing they were going to do this, and released them anyway, because they want to kill whatever population it was that had the reaction.

Michelle can't help herself, she listened to Rev Wright for twenty years, she heard what Barack claims he didn't all that time.

Yes Michelle, please tell us what you really believe and don't listen to those handlers telling you to be quiet or avoid "certain" subjects. I mean, what's the point of being in the spotlight if you can't speak your mind.

tap, tap, tap, tap (tune to shave and a hair cut)

"But by 1947 penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. At that point Tuskegee could have treated all the men with penicillin or broken off some as a control group and treated the others. "

Clarice, in your original article you stated that Tuskeegee "could" have ended the experiment once penicillin became available. Not that they "should" have. In your reply you have stated that "the experiment should have ended, not continued on for decades without notification to the subjects and treatment." That is what I was looking for.

The article shows a lot of passion and outrage at MO for her pandering, but none of that same passion for what was a truly immoral experiment. My comment was meant to show that at times as humans we can easily write off the sufferring of those who we see as far removed from us. It is said that the gravity of a tragedy decreases the further it hits from home. If one hears that their neighbors house burned down and four people died they are likely to feel worse than if they hear 10000 died in Myanmar yesterday.

That said, there is a real reason why Tuskeegee is viewed as a low point in the African American community. It leads to questions such as how does my country see me? Are we expendable test subjects? do our sacrifices matter? Race hustlers can use this for their benefit. But it behooves all people of good conscience to point out that , yes this was a terrible thing. The facts may be stretched by those who want to create controversies, but it engenders bad feelings when someone says in effect "Tuskeegee was'n that bad". It's like telling an Irishman that the Potato Famine wasn't that bad. It was to him.

As to the benefits of the HPV vaccination and MO's duty to educate her community on it, that arguement has merit.

How much passion must I express to meet your test? The deed was done years ago and apologies and compensation paid. It seemed to me conduct which in yet another way is harming black citizens NOW is worth noting with more passion especially as it is done in a way to continue the lie about Tuskegee--fanned by a man Michelle patronized as her preacher and financially supported.
This lie seems to be having continuing bad effects on the welfare of blacks by keeping them from participating in needed medical trials.

Clarice, a little passion would have been sufficient! The arguement you make seems to be that MO passed over the HPV vaccinations for high school girls and this arguably hurts the black community. You state this propogates the lies about Tuskegee and tie this into Wright's beliefs regarding the AIDS virus. Now this would all be a good arguement, save for one thing which you have already pointed to in your own posts: the Tuskegee experiment was unethical and should have ended after penicillin became available. If that is the case, then MO may not be reacting to the "lies about Tuskegee", this whole thing cannot be tied to Wright and the strawman is knocked down.

Now as to my points regarding passion, the fact that "the deed was done years ago and apologies and compensation paid" is beyond the point. The same can be said for the holocaust, but any person of conscience would surely feel strongly and passionately about that event. Again the difference is merely the degree of suffering or how close one relates to the sufferers. Tuskegee raised many questions in black minds as to how far they should trust government. The difference over whether the government injected them or simply let them fester with the sickness is a semantic one. It's kind of like saying it's okay to give someone apple juice instead of an antidote, as long as you didn't give them the poison in the first place. Your article seems to imply that nothing untoward happened in the experiment, when in fact, as you yourself stated, it did.

The article does state something wrong happened at Tuskegee but that (a) it has been overstated to created a paranoia among blacks to medical trials which today are run under far stricter bio-medical ethics rules(b) MO capitalized on that instead of clearing the air and (c) in so doing, she hurt, rather than helped, the black community.

The rest, sir, is a dispute about emotive styles.I'm not Oprah.