Presentism and the Tuskegee Study.

Moira Breen has unearthed an interesting essay on the Tuskegee syphilis study. The study offers the "counter-narrative" that the study was not an example of institutionalized racism. Rather, the study was founded on the medical realities of the time which included the fact that syphilis was not easily or reliably treated, that the men were past the period when they were infectious, that since 98% of the men sought some kind of treatment for "bad blood" during the stuy there was some awareness by the men that they were not being treated as part of the study and that a majority of syphilis cases spontaneously cure themselves. Incidentally, I was surprised to find out that the men were not infected as part of the study. I don't where I got the information that they had been, but that's what I kind of thought.

I don't know. I strongly suspect that such a study would never have been performed among the middle class in New York or Chicago. Maybe, as Moira points out and the article suggests, the doctors went to where there knew there were poor people who would be more likely to think that the possibility of some free medical care as worth the non-treatment they were getting.

I certainly think that the essay underscores the problem that we as a society have with "presentism" which acts as a filter on our understanding of the past.