"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social service backgrounds and engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. And the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
– Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939, letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble
It's hard to comprehend that level of cruelty, let alone when the government does it in the name of science.
The story instantly feels familiar. Except the year was 1932, not 2024.
The place was Macon County. And the group? Six hundred men – not including wives or children – 399 infected with syphilis, 201 without. Remember that not many of these men or their families had ever been to the doctor, but all were seduced into a study by the promise of free health care.
The study was headed up by three University of Virginia-trained physicians, publicly aligned with the eugenics movement, who, with a team of others, maliciously turned dignified men from Tuskegee into human lab rats. Unsuspecting experiments. Human Guinea pigs.
The Public Health Service started the enterprise that was initially set to last six months to a year. Instead, it dragged on for 40 agonizing years. And because no one was treated – not one man – the side effects included blindness and madness along with a host of other horrors for those infected.
The project would've remained a secret if not for the brave determination of Peter Buxtun. Buxtun died recently, but his legacy continues. He was, after all, daring enough to gather data, compile evidence and then confront his supposed medical betters. Again, sounds familiar.
So what happened? According to History.com:
In the mid-1960s, a PHS [Public Health Service] venereal disease investigator in San Francisco named Peter Buxtun found out about the Tuskegee study and expressed his concerns to his superiors that it was unethical. In response, PHS officials formed a committee to review the study, but ultimately opted to continue it—with the goal of tracking the participants until all had died, autopsies were performed and the project data could be analyzed.
Thankfully, Buxtun persisted.
"It wasn't until a whistleblower, Peter Buxtun, leaked information about the study to the New York Times and the paper published it on the front page on November 16, 1972, that the Tuskegee study finally ended,” an article from McGill University explains. “By this time only 74 of the test subjects were still alive. 128 patients had died of syphilis or its complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had acquired congenital syphilis."
Sure. They trotted out a decent enough reason. They wanted to track syphilis's entire progression. That's why they didn't treat the infected men. Because science!
Sounds familiar.
But how did this happen? It happened because the study's leaders were publicly aligned with the Francis Galton-originated, Margaret Sanger-perpetuated eugenics movement. The venture was run by men and women who believed that better breeding would lead to better people. And how perfect!
The Public Health Service leaders were the right kind of humans, the only types of humans, who could decide what happened to those Macon County men, the human weeds of their generation. How else can someone explain the torture? Or the suffering? The blindness? And the madness? Or the allowance that there would be casualties – like wives who became infected or children who were never born because of their father's infertility?
What other reason is there than that the study leaders didn't think those men were worthy of life?
The treatment of those men was unconscionable. And, yes, horribly racist and cruel.
But here are the lessons for us: Be like Peter Buxtun. Speak up.
Then, remember that Tuskegee, with her exquisite cruelties, wasn't a one-off. It was a warm-up.
A government that practiced eugenics on those men, who practice it now on babies in the womb, and who practiced it on us during COVID-19, will also practice it on us again. We know they're waiting to trot out the bird flu – en masse. We know that our government and organizations such as the World Economic Forum are waiting to do so much more. To them, we are the guinea pigs, the lab rats, the human weeds.
It’s evil. But there is something we can do.
R. J. Rushdoony said it best:
It is easy enough for any man to see the evils of the day. It is another thing entirely to have the faith and character to create a new society. … Men are not saved by knowing how evil the times are, but by the sovereign and saving power of God. … Evil is overcome, not simply by knowledge, but by godliness.
Amie Beth Shaver co-hosts Alabama Unfiltered Radio show daily from 9-12 a.m. on News Talk 93.1 fm WAVC, and 92.5, WXJC. Her column appears every other Saturday at 1819 News. To book Amie Beth for media or speaking engagement's, email amiebeth.shaver@1819News.com.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com.
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