21 - The Tuskegee Syphilis Study (via You’re Wrong About)

In this episode we unpack the history and ethics of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932–1972), guided by Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall’s reporting in You’re Wrong About. We recount how U.S. Public Health Service researchers recruited 600 Black men in Macon County, Alabama under the promise of treatment for “bad blood,” then withheld effective care, even after penicillin became a simple cure, so they could watch the disease progress. We explore why the study was “bad science” as well as immoral; the racist assumptions baked into its design (e.g., claims that syphilis affects Black bodies differently); and why it kept running long after penicillin was a viable option because the participants as “more valuable” as cadavers). 

Content & Spoiler Warning:

This episode includes spoilers for the You’re Wrong About two-parter on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and discussion of: medical racism, eugenics, unethical human experimentation, government misconduct, venereal disease symptoms and treatment (e.g., spinal taps, mercury “rubs”), lynchings, sterilisation without consent, infection of prisoners, intergenerational trauma, and mental-health impacts.

Palate Cleanser

Max Rebo Productions (TikTok): Classic Star Wars toys lip-sync famous ‘90s movie scenes (Karate Kid, Home Alone, My Cousin Vinny). Pure delight between heavy topics.

Recommendations:
Podcasts & Episodes

• You’re Wrong About — Tuskegee two-parter; plus episodes on Anita Hill, eugenics, Reagan/Trump, DARE, Satanic Panic/D&D.
• Distrust & Disparities — Two-parter on Tuskegee and broader medical inequities.
• Black History for White People — Discussion including hospital perspectives.
• 1619 — “How the Bad Blood Started.”
• The Breakdown (Sean King) — Context for vaccine hesitancy vs. Tuskegee.
• This Podcast Will Kill You — Syphilis overview and history.
• The Dollop — Syphilis episode (history).
• American Scandal (Wondery) — Tuskegee season (Ep. 1 free).
• Sounds Like a Cult — Humanitarian/aid-adjacent critique.
• Seeing White - Episodes 1 & 2

Books & Articles:

• Medical Apartheid — On systemic medical exploitation and its legacy.
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
• Works by Dale Huey and Ta Nehisi Coates

Films & TV:

• The Fall of the House of Usher (Mike Flanagan) — Sackler-like family and “bad drugs.”
• Westworld — How people treat “less-than-human” beings.
• Stranger Things — Dr. Brenner as “greater good” rationaliser.
• The Pitt — Representation matters in diagnosis (sickle cell storyline).
• Sinners (set in Mississippi sharecropping milieu) and Weapons.  Both flagged for future episodes for sure!

Contacts:

• Makeda Pennycooke, Life Coach & Chance Strategist for anti-racism coaching makeda@makedapennycooke.com

Homework:
Watch: Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro) on Netflix to explore the ethics of creation. and it includes a syphilis line: “A night with Venus, a lifetime with mercury.”

But before that, it’s our Christmas special! So read, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Special thanks to Nancy Azano for our cover art (Instagram: @nancyazano) and to Harry Kidd for our opening score (Instagram: @harryjkidd) 

Transcript

Anne: 0:10

Welcome back to Drawn To Darkness, a sometimes weekly, sometimes biweekly podcast where we discuss our favorite horror and true crime. If you are fascinated and appalled by the dark history of our past, we're here for you. My name is Annie and I'll be introducing Caroline to my favorite horror movies, podcast, TV shows and books.

Caroline: 0:25

And my name is Caroline and I'll be doing the same from the true crime side of things.

Anne: 0:30

Minor correction from last week in our Gray Gardens episode. I called Jerry Ricky just once. His name's Jerry. I don't know where I got Ricky. There's something similar about those names, I guess in my head, but that's all.

Caroline: 0:41

I always think of Ricky from my so-called Live with Ricky, so I would not have but maybe Ricky Bobby.

Anne: 0:46

Yeah. Ricky Bobby. Ricky Martin. It's probably who I think of.

Caroline: 0:49

Oh yeah.

Anne: 0:50

Okay. so I wanna start by asking you a question. Have you ever, or would you ever take part in medical research, like a scientific experiment or some kind of clinical trial?

Caroline: 1:00

no. I think because I don't have enough, self-discipline. My grandmother apparently donated her breast milk, I definitely had way more than I needed, and I thought about it, but it was like, then I have to pay attention to like, I taking or did I have a glass of wine, or all this stuff like that. So I just don't have the like, fortitude.

Anne: 1:18

I considered a sleep study. I think it was the summer in between college and real life, and. You'd have to actually be in a lab for like a month or two. It was a friend of mine who brought it up and you got paid a lot, I think like$10,000 to like live in a lab. And we were just thinking about it because we wanted to travel and we wanted to make money quickly. Ultimately I decided that was a little too scary and I decided to work in a bar instead. part of my decision making process was based on the electric shock scene from Ghostbusters. Do you remember that? How it opens?

Caroline: 1:46

I do with a girlfriend from Charles in charge.

Anne: 1:49

Okay. Yeah. And, that made me doubt the, I don't know, I guess integrity of scientific researchers, but at that time I did not know about the Tuskegee syphilis study, which is what we're discussing today, where the integrity of the researchers is far more compromised. Before we go any further spoiler and content warning, there will be discussion of pretty appalling racism, eugenics, description of the impact of venereal diseases, sadistic medical experimentation on black bodies. And we'll be discussing real historical events that happened through the lens of the podcast you're wrong about. So I guess we're spoiling history for you. if you wanna go listen to you're wrong about before our discussion, you can go do that. So Caroline, can you tell us what this is about?

Caroline: 2:31

Sure. in our yellow wallpaper episode, we touched on medical misogyny, and today we'll be talking about medical racism, focusing on the Tuskegee Syphilis study, as covered by the incredibly thorough Michael Hobbes, reporter for Huff Post and freelance writer Sarah Marshall on their truly eye-opening podcast called You're Wrong, about which covers events across pop culture and history, in particular situations where the common perception does not match with the reality of what occurred. this so-called study on the effects of untreated syphilis was a truly horrifying, unethical medical experiment conducted by the US Public Health Service in partnership with Tuskegee University between 1932 and 1972 in Alabama. It involved, we think 600 African American men, roughly 400 with syphilis and 200 without, who were recruited with the offer of free treatment for bad blood. A catchall term that included syphilis, but also other ailments. They were misled into believing they were receiving free medical care, when in fact many were just being observed without as reachers withheld effective treatment, even after penicillin discovered in 1942 and widely available after World War II, became an easy and effective cure. highly publicized study continued operating under an array of false narratives covered expertly in these episodes, which we highly recommend, including that the men were more valuable to the study as cadavers to be studied after their demise. Many participants suffered severe health consequences or died, passed it on to their wives and children, et cetera. The study is now symbolic of racial injustice and medical exploitation, and although it led to some reforms in research ethics and consent standards, it joins a long list of medical abuses by the US government upon people of color and the legacy of mistrust in medicine.

Anne: 4:29

before we go too deeply into this, let's just talk about you're wrong about a little bit. it's a great podcast. It's really well researched. As you said, I've listened to quite a few episodes. It covers, things like Satanic Panic going Postal, Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbit, kitty GenZe, the Bystander Effect, Tanya Harding, Anita Hill Urban Legends. If you just scroll through, there's so many interesting topics where it's like oh, yeah, I think I know what happened there. But then you'll realize if you listen, there's a lot more to it. I recently listened to one for our Stranger Things episode a few weeks ago about Satanic panic in relation to Dungeons and Dragons. So just a great podcast to confront the myths and narratives of our past, which are not always accurate. Do you have any favorite episodes?

Caroline: 5:09

the first one I ever listened to was Anita Hill and I couldn't believe how wrong I was about it. Other episodes that I thought were very eye-opening and important and helpful, eugenics. There's, I think, a two-parter on Reagan and a two-parter on Trump. I think it's also a two-parter on the DARE program, that was the most like, I think I was wrong about, or the con public perspective is wrong about. And it really also includes Ways that people have, have successfully confronted some of these issues in other countries. So like Even if there's something tangentially related to the topic, at the crux of it, you'll get a lot of information about other things. You could go down a whole rabbit hole, like Wikipedia, rabbit hole style

Anne: 5:51

I love a rabbit hole. Sarah and Michael also have a nice conversational dynamic. I enjoy the way Sarah connects whatever they talk about talking about to things like Star Wars cult leaders, Seinfeld. I was thinking the same thing about her Vaire Vandalay Industries joke. Yeah.

Caroline: 6:08

Same.

Anne: 6:08

So she was anticipating my own jokes that I might have made. So I enjoy their conversations. and yeah, as, as we said well researched, Michael mentions 141 pages of notes, which is way more than I have for anything. So that's a lot.

Caroline: 6:21

wrote that

Anne: 6:21

Yeah.

Caroline: 6:22

That was my first note.

Anne: 6:24

So what adjective would you use to describe this?

Caroline: 6:27

The podcast episodes think are, eyeopening. Enlightening, important, The study itself truly inexcusable, and disgraceful.

Anne: 6:38

I had despicable Evil, and I might quote Bill Clinton and say, shameful in his national apology. I didn't know much about, Tuskegee going into this. I think I had keywords, racism, disease, government experiment. I think I had heard that common misconception that black men had been infected on purpose, I listened to the dollop episode on syphilis. They had one on the history of syphilis and even Dave Anthony repeats that misconception. So it's pretty common. And although that isn't what happened here, our government has in the past infected people that they have dehumanized with syphilis. So this kind of thing is not unheard of. Did you know about those Guatemalan infections? I can't remember where

Caroline: 7:15

not before listening to the podcast. The first time I listened. Yeah.

Anne: 7:19

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty awful. Paying sex workers with syphilis to infect 700 prisoners and if it didn't work, putting syphilis into scrapes on their genitals.

Caroline: 7:29

Unbelievable.

Anne: 7:30

medieval stuff. yeah, the dollop episode was really good, but it, wasn't about Tuskegee, it was about syphilis in general. And they talk about some doctor injecting children with inactive syphilis and other guy puncturing the brains of people to test for it. So the history of syphilis is really rife with unethical, mad scientists, so-called research. I also, as I always do, I like to immerse myself in whatever we're prepping for. So I listen to that dollop episode for a lighter take on all of this. But I also listen to one of my favorite podcasts of all,, time. This podcast will Kill You. Have you ever heard of that one?

Caroline: 7:59

Oh yeah, I think from you or also Karen in Georgia Probably,

Anne: 8:03

Yeah, I probably said this before, but my favorite sub-genre of podcast is smart people enthusiastically discussing something they're passionate about. And Aaron and Aaron very much fit that bill. so I binged it during COVID because they definitely got like a COVID boost because they're a podcast about diseases. so I wanted to pass on some not fun facts about syphilis because nothing about syphilis is fun, but fascinating facts about diseases that I learned from this. I looked it up and it's currently on the rise and Australia is experiencing a syphilis epidemic and it's similar in the us. A BBC article I read said that in 2024 cases of syphilis had reached their highest levels in more than a decade. Uh. And that's probably due to the disruption of STI prevention because of the pandemic. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Um,

Caroline: 8:48

a question that's a tangent.

Anne: 8:51

sure.

Caroline: 8:51

the hosts of this podcast will kill you to girls to boys? Boy, girl. how do they spell? Erin And Erin.

Anne: 8:58

ERIN two women, they're both scientists, epidemiologists, something like that.

Caroline: 9:04

do you say the man named different or the traditionally male version of Erin different? Because I do not,

Anne: 9:10

I don't either.

Caroline: 9:11

do.

Anne: 9:11

And my husband gets really mad at me. He's like, he always points out that I say it the same. Yeah,

Caroline: 9:19

I think England thing. Somebody mentioned like that in New England. There's no difference, but I can't remember where I heard it from. But in other places it's like Aaron and Aaron.

Anne: 9:29

yeah. Consistently,

Caroline: 9:30

Yeah. Same.

Anne: 9:31

I don't see the difference. Even if I try,

Caroline: 9:34

Yeah, shout out to the Aarons. I know Hello

Anne: 9:36

you could always pronounce it a Aron,

Caroline: 9:39

Right Jaque and wife couple that are a Avron and Jaque

Anne: 9:47

Oh, no way.

Caroline: 9:48

Yeah

Anne: 9:48

That's amazing. All right, so bit of history. I don't know about you, but I associate this disease with like medieval times and madness, and it has been around for a very long time. First identified in 1495, not long after Christopher Columbus and his crew returned to Europe after raping and pillaging the new world, most likely bringing it back with them as part of the Colombian exchange. That's still kind of debated, like some people think it was in Europe before and perhaps symptoms were misidentified as other diseases like leprosy, but I think some genetic testing supports that. It came from South America.

Caroline: 10:23

Well, that was an interesting part of this podcast as well, the whole element of people from different countries calling it the German disease, the Spanish you know like just the whole element of those people over there who are different. It's their fault that we're sick, which

Anne: 10:38

Yes.

Caroline: 10:39

that has never left us.

Anne: 10:40

the stigmatization of diseases the way one group always manages to blame some other group that's really demonstrated by that list of names. But as you said, this still happens. You see this with HIV in the eighties we still refer to the 1918 flu pandemic as the Spanish flu, and it probably originated in American military bases. So I think that's one of the deeper horrors of this. Like a disease can come for any of us. And it shouldn't be associated with morality or othering. I guess nobody wants to take credit for a sexually transmitted disease that causes boils and your nose to rot off, because that's what it did in the beginning. Hey, maybe some of those villains you mentioned that have no noses,

Caroline: 11:19

that's

Anne: 11:19

and

Caroline: 11:19

have no noses.

Anne: 11:21

maybe that's why they're mad.

Caroline: 11:22

So true

Anne: 11:23

Yeah.

Caroline: 11:24

is syphilis is the one where they would shoot mer Mercury up a penis, right?

Anne: 11:28

uh, it rubs the mercury on its skin. Right. They would do mercury rubs, so, and have a belt around you to like, make sure it stayed there. So yeah, not a great solution. a Ranker article I found listed a bunch of famous people who had it or may have had it. There's a lot of like revisionist history in terms of, diagnosing people after the fact. But I think Al Capone definitely had it. Some people theorize that Hitler's behavior could be explained by it. Lots of mad rulers like, I mean, perhaps Henry vii, many believe Abraham Lincoln passed it on to Mary Todd, who had a lot of symptoms later in life. Some people think Shakespeare had it. Oscar Wilde, it was pretty rampant. Shakespeare calls it the Neapolitan bone ache and the Malady of France. And in several of his plays, they talk about a French crown, that refers to the sufferers losing their hair and of course, blaming the French.

Caroline: 12:18

Of course.

Anne: 12:19

until penicillin, as we said, it was treated with mercury, arsenic, and even people were injected with malaria to induce a high fever that could fight it off. So. Not great. Throughout this centuries, it has become less virulent and deadly, but it is still obviously very harmful to our bodies. On this podcast will kill you, Aaron and Aaron talk about how it's a corkscrew shaped bacterial spyro keet spread by sexual contact. And the problem is the sores are not painful or itchy, so you might not see them and you might not know you have them. So it can really go unnoticed and spread quite easily. it goes through several phases. Primary, secondary, and tertiary, I believe, or primary latent and tertiary. It's been called the great imitator because it can really attack anything, any organ, and it can cause madness or senility because it can pass through that blood-brain barrier, which is why it's associated with that. According to this podcast will Kill You. Before 19 45, 5 to 10% of psychiatric hospitalizations were due to syphilis, which I thought was a pretty shocking figure. Sorry, are you talking'cause you're muted.

Caroline: 13:19

No I I I only my expression, I know this is audio medium, but I was like,

Anne: 13:25

So appalled.

Caroline: 13:27

I had a scrunchie face.

Anne: 13:28

Yeah.

Caroline: 13:29

a grossed out scrunchie face.

Anne: 13:30

So we won't go into all the nasty details here, but if you wanna know more, listen to that podcast. And I do think the symptoms of what people in the various stages of syphilis experience is important because it's what these men involved in this study were going through, especially post 1945 when penicillin became widely available and could have miraculously cured it. and it still works today. Penicillin, no resistance, which is amazing because a lot of other bacterial infections have become resistant to the antibiotics we use. Okay, let's talk about setting. from 1932 to 1972, just after the Great Depression Jim Crow era. Macon County, Alabama, which is majority black, 82%, many of whom were earning just$1 a day. This was a time of lynchings, as Michael mentions 13 confirmed lynchings in Alabama, and he outlines the lives of sharecroppers. And His description really reminded me of the recently released absolutely fantastic horror movie, sinners, which is set in Mississippi, but has that similar backdrop of poor sharecroppers debt, slavery, and racism. Have you seen it yet?

Caroline: 14:31

No.

Anne: 14:32

We will cover it at some point. It's very good. As is often the case where people, because their income don't have access to medical treatment, there was a lot of disease amongst this population, including a high incidence of sy syphilis, which was racistly attributed to moral inferiority. Instead of systemic poverty. Poverty. So let's talk about the study

Caroline: 14:51

there are so many Pieces that this podcast covers about this study that are recurring themes, right? That we've talked about, like the sunk cost fallacy, et cetera. So you mentioned penicillin still being effective and being widely available, this sense that people were saying, well, we stop now, it will have been for nothing. We've already put this much time and effort into it, we'll never have this opportunity again. And acknowledging ethically you could never get away with starting something like this at a certain point, and that we have to continue with it for that reason. so there's all those elements of it, which are just mind boggling. I think what I kept coming back to was all of the effort that was made to these people don't get treatment even though they couldn't fully ensure it. So like sending out notices to their doc, local doctors to make sure they don't get treatment, some of whom may or may not have gotten it anyway for some other reason. All, you know, preventing people from serving so that they don't find out through taking a test when they're about to enlist that they have it. even with all these efforts, it's not actually even a good study because they couldn't even keep track of how many people and, all of these different tangentially connected elements to it that make it a really imperfect and poor medical study to begin with. it's All, even a house of cards, like it's built on Okay.

Anne: 16:22

Well, yeah, it's pointless because syphilis had been around for hundreds of years. They know what it does to the body. They discovered that untreated syphilis is bad. Right. So there's a pointlessness to it. It's bad science. I mean. I support a lot of students with their, uh, year 11 and 12 science experiments. And I'm not a science teacher, but I support them with the English communication aspect of it. And, you know, we talk about this to death in science, in high school, reliability, validity, you know, what, what are you doing with your sample size? Are you controlling your variables? And I'm talking high school kids, they're not experimenting on people, right. But even if they're working with microscopic organisms, they have to acknowledge potential ethical and safety concerns. So it's such a bad study in so many ways. And obviously aside from the pointlessness of it and the bad science of it, it is super, super unethical. you know, an observational study is not inherently evil, but the intentions and underlying assumptions I think are very flawed. They believed that syphilis presented differently in black people, and that was because of eugenics and that perceived superiority of the white brain. So they thought, oh, okay, well white people's brains are so much more advanced, so it's gonna go after our nervous system, but it's going to, go after the hearts of black people. So there's that underlying belief and inferiority that prompted the study. And other than that, it's just like, even if you take the racism out, right, which you can't, they lied to them. They drew them in with promises of treatment. They did not get consent. They did not inform them. They had syphilis. They stopped them from getting treatment. So, yeah, there's so much that makes this highly unethical, highly racist. And, you know, just despicable,

Caroline: 17:57

I don't understand how people convince themselves that they were acting ethical, you know? I mean, I think there's some interesting people in here, like the nurse, whose

Anne: 18:06

Eunice Rivers.

Caroline: 18:07

down. Yeah. Her intention on, treating the people who are participating in the study like humans and with respect and dignity. And also it seems like there's evidence that in some cases she did try to protect them or help them or aid them in some way. I can understand where she had an element of like, this is gonna happen with me or without me, and I can be more helpful involved than I could if I wasn't But I don't really understand, the gravitas and the like, I don't know, balls of like publishing, articles about what you're doing and just being like, yeah, it's cool. And calling them volunteers when you know they're not volunteers and still feeling like you're justified.

Anne: 18:46

Yeah. In some ways it's like the designers of the study are so racist, they don't even think they're racist, like they're not even hiding it. So just how ingrained those views are that they have. I think the name speaks for itself, the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the Negro male. They wanted to see what happened if you didn't treat it even though there was treatment. some Of the quotes I think are just really chilling. Like, I can't remember who said it, but as I see it, we have no further interest until they die. They are cadavers that have been identified while still alive. They're more valuable as corpses. And they're just saying it shivers. Right. It's, The fact that you could say that shows how little you value the people who were participating. And I say participating in quotes because they didn't even know they were participating in a study. They didn't agree to anything.

Caroline: 19:33

I was listening today to I think 20 podcast episode this week was on ah, Maud Arbery. There's a, point where the, lawyer for the defendants who shot him, is trying to make an argument that Al Sharpton shouldn't be allowed to be in the audience because what if they brought in a bunch of Ku Klux Klan people or something like that, I couldn't believe the words I was hearing him be like, you know, this person being here as a black pastor is intimidating. Crowd because

Anne: 20:04

Hmm.

Caroline: 20:05

literally just a black person sitting in the crowd as a pastor. And then comparing that to like having clan members if

Anne: 20:13

Yeah,

Caroline: 20:13

being a human being who happens to be black, is somehow comparable to the hateful rhetoric behind clan members,

Anne: 20:21

and, and just like racism that you don't even realize is racist. Yeah.

Caroline: 20:25

cause you're so racist you can't even see it.

Anne: 20:27

Yeah. One thing I think is interesting, the idea that I think Sarah points out, and she says this sarcastically that no one knew it was bad to be racist. And I think that's really not true. I think sometimes we look back at the past and think, oh, well, if you were awful and racist, that's just kind of expected. That's a foregone conclusion. Yeah, there were a lot of people who were racist, but there were also people who saw through that, and saw people as humans. So maybe we are giving the racists of the 1930s and the 1830s too much. leeway, is that the right word?

Caroline: 20:55

Well, I think they have a good sort of philosophical discussion about that. Like they sort of acknowledge it is important to understand temperature of a time when you're discussing a thing that

Anne: 21:06

Yeah.

Caroline: 21:07

but it's not a catchall, everything should be taken as a spectrum of things like context Yes, context matters, but it's not like, it was impossible to see beyond context of your reality, you know? And I think about that a lot. I've mentioned before, a trans person in, in my family, and there were some people of certain generations who couldn't handle it, but like the oldest member of my family, both on my husband's side and my side was just like, whatever, you know and it just shows like, yeah, you can be influenced by the circumstances, but it's not insurmountable, you

Anne: 21:42

Yes, it was possible to still be a good person in that time in history and not dehumanize others because people did it. The doctors mentioned, so we've got John c Cutler. He was involved in the, deliberate infection of Guatemalan prisoners in the 1940s, so not a great resume item. His letters reveal that he thought he was at war. And I do think that's interesting. The idea that, you're at war with a disease, you think you're doing God's work. Reminds me of Dr. Brenner. From our Stranger Things episode, how he's justifying really unethical treatment of his participants. also, I think I'm flashing back to Jason in our Stranger Things episode. The idea that when you think you're a hero. You think you're doing the right thing, you're willing to, make things fit your viewpoint, and you're willing to allow collateral damage if you think you're a hero, if you think you're fighting a war,

Caroline: 22:34

Absolutely. I mean, this choice was inspired by Stranger things and the medical experiment element to it, and there was so much of that, especially, when Dr. Brenner keeps holding on to, it's like, it's too late for this study to still be successful and they just keep holding on, to what they think is the right thing to do. Even in, in the face of all the evidence that's like, you've clearly caused a lot of suffering and pain.

Anne: 22:59

yeah.

Caroline: 22:59

For

Anne: 22:59

So once again, sunk cost fallacy, you know? Um. We've come this far, but sometimes you need to know when to GTFO and step back and consider why are we still doing the things we're we're doing? Is it because we've just always done it that way? Should it be continued and it shouldn't have been.

Caroline: 23:15

there's there's another element of that, as we were talking about the, validity of the study in general from a scientific perspective as well as this whole concept, Michael makes a really great point of like, objectivity not the only concern of a society, right? There's this sense that if you strip it, of the emotional elements to it, this was a study to understand the effects. Of syphilis, on these quote cadavers who were identified while alive. And the thing is, in a society, that is not the only piece that syphilis would As you said, it causes mental issues. There's all other physical sort of ailments. It spreads, you know, there's all, all these other elements to it of, of how it could impact the world at large that are not being considered here in the false narrative of for science.

Anne: 24:10

I think it's interesting the people involved. We've got Vaire or Van Dele, Tala, farro Clark Tala Farro. That's a name I've never heard.

Caroline: 24:18

I also like that they called von Laer the quote architect of the program. Which George

Anne: 24:22

Oh.

Caroline: 24:23

be

Anne: 24:23

Always wanted to be an architect. Yes. you know, and then, uh, it's all very Dr. Frankenstein, the ego of the doctors and researchers who are dehumanizing these patients. I do think it's interesting and upsetting that without podcasts like this, you wouldn't know their names. But if you only had a cursory knowledge of the Tuskegee Syphilis study, you might know Eunice Rivers. And that she has become, I think the face of this, if you Google image this study, you're gonna see her. You're not necessarily gonna see them. And she is not the one who was the architect of this.

Caroline: 25:00

There's always gotta be a fall guy,

Anne: 25:02

So I listened to this podcast that I highly recommend called Distrust and Disparities. It's two black women, Jasmine Moore and Camille White, at least one of them is an rn. And they discuss this. And you know, I think one of the things that's missing here in our podcast and also and you're wrong about is Black Voices. It's, it's not just about Tuskegee. They have like 60 something episodes about the many, many, many reasons. There is distrust and discrepancy. So check them out. But they, point out that just like also the author of Medical Apartheid, they're more sympathetic to Eunice Reverse. They point out that nurses were handmaidens trained. Not to question doctors. That's still probably true. To some extent that she was on the, really the lowest rung of the hierarchy. She's a black woman working for white men in Alabama. Jim Crow era. She's a woman working for men and she's a nurse working for doctors. So the idea that she's to blame that she's the biggest,, betrayer in this is really unfair.

Caroline: 26:01

I think it does speak to the element of it being like a white collar crime, which is a much more Thing and involves many bad actors, not just one. They do discuss that whole parable of who's guilty a Nazi context. Right. On the podcast they talk

Anne: 26:18

That was really interesting. Yeah.

Caroline: 26:20

It's important to think about and hear about, who is guilty when everyone is just doing their job supposedly.

Anne: 26:28

Also economically, there's not a lot of jobs for a black nurse in that time in history in that part of the world. And she grew up in poverty, so, you know, she probably wanted to keep her job. Right. So again, I'm not defending her or condemning her, I don't think I have the right to do that. But I think we do need to be aware of the multifaceted, like intersectional power differential here, plus like, what was she gonna do about it, right? If she had quit and walked away. It wouldn't have made a difference if she'd blown the whistle. No one would've listened. I mean, the white epidemiologist couldn't get anyone to listen to him in the late sixties. So why would anyone listen to her? So I get the argument that she was trying to do some good by getting them other care, being a maternal figure. She calls it the joy of her life. She denies the accusation that she was taking men out of lines to get penicillin. That that is a fallacy. And all these men seem to, from what I understand, again, speak highly of her. She went to their funerals. Maybe she did think she was doing the best she could, protecting them from the worst of the racism they could have experienced. And advocating to some extent.

Caroline: 27:32

Obviously to your point, we are two white women we could never speak to or understand her context. We are white voices talking about this as are the people you're wrong about. So I think you made a great point to listen to Black Voices discuss this, certainly see her as the least culpable person that we learned about throughout the process of learning about this study.

Anne: 27:54

I mean, in some ways I wonder if this is kind of like, you know, in, in Trump's first term, there were all those Washington insiders who stuck around. And there was all this debate about whether or not that that was the right thing to do. Are they mitigating the damage or are they legitimizing him by staying? So I think it's kind of like blaming those lower level people who take the fall for the actions of the person at the top of the hierarchy. And whether or not that's fair.

Caroline: 28:19

It's not

Anne: 28:19

It's not. Yeah. one thing that was funny, I was typing notes on my phone and I had written something along the lines of, so public opinion has held a black woman who was at the bottom of the hierarchy to a higher standard than the shy men at the top of the hierarchy whose idea it was. So my phone autocorrected white men to shy men, which I thought was accurate. Yep. Again. We're not the people to judge, but arguably she was used as both a lure and a shield to legitimize this study and use those men. We've talked about the villains, Aire Clark Wegner. I think, let's talk about the heroes. There's not a lot of them. Not enough. Erwin Schutz. Is very what the fuck he writes. I am utterly astounded by the fact that physicians allow patients with potentially fatal disease to remain untreated when effective therapy is available. I assume you feel that the information which is extracted from observation of this untreated group is worth their sacrifice. If this is the case, then I suggest the United States Public Health Service and those physicians associated with it in the study need to reevaluate their moral judgments in this regard. And he was ignored.

Caroline: 29:27

It's insane. What's the oath you take for a doctor Called

Anne: 29:31

Hippocratic. Yeah,

Caroline: 29:32

due, no harm or whatever.

Anne: 29:34

You're doing harm by not letting them have that.

Caroline: 29:36

you should lose your license. You know? that's the most basic element of healthcare.

Anne: 29:40

Well, one of the things, one of my outstanding questions is, did any of these men. These researchers at the top of the hierarchy ever receive any sort of punishment or, fallout from this. And the two women on that, distrust and discrepancy podcast said they were looking into it and couldn't find that they had. And, with a crime like this where culpability is spread out, you often don't see anyone gets punished, but perhaps a scapegoat towards the bottom of the hierarchy.

Caroline: 30:06

Yeah, a scooter, Libby.

Anne: 30:08

Yeah. There was also Bill Jenkins, who was an African American, epidemiologist. I don't know if he was an epidemiologist at the time, but he then studied and became one, and he worked with Buxton to blow the whistle after finding out in 1968, and then went on to dedicate his life to reducing racial health disparities. And then there's Buxton. so I thought he was interesting that he wouldn't let it go and good for him.

Caroline: 30:31

Amen.

Anne: 30:32

Michael talks about how Peter Buxton couldn't let the, his knowledge of this study go and he would rant about it in bars and I don't know if he really ranted about it in bars or if Michael was just kind of saying that. But, I wanted to ask you a question. What is the thing that you rant about in bars, the thing that makes other parents that pick up side? I you, is it just serial killers or anything else?

Caroline: 30:51

No, I don't rant about them because I feel like in this context it's like you're trying to share something that you feel like is interesting and important and you think the other person should think is interesting and important. I completely get why people don't wanna think about murder. I don't get why anybody doesn't like TikTok. I think my number one thing that I always tell people about TikTok is like, but if you're on it for too long, the app tells you, Hey, you're still scrolling too long. Put this down. It'll be here tomorrow. Have you ever heard of another social media app that does that? Or another app in general that's like, Hey, you don't need to keep doing this. go to bed,

Anne: 31:31

oh, that's nice I only watch TikTok through videos you send me directly because anytime I've tried to go on, whatever it passes to me is just like, I'm not interested in this and I haven't made the time to let it figure me out.

Caroline: 31:43

it won't take long. I'll tell you. It will not take long to figure you out. But yeah, I was trying to think like, what is it that I try to other people on board with and now, I mean, there's a bunch of AI videos and stuff, so I'm very excited for the Return of Vine, which apparently is not gonna allow any AI videos. Good.

Anne: 32:00

Good. I hate

Caroline: 32:01

I hate

Anne: 32:01

AI videos.

Caroline: 32:02

Yeah.

Anne: 32:02

for me, some of the weird things I like to talk about that get me side eye are like Bigfoot. cause I'm interested in whether or not it's real and the possibility that exists. Another one I love is the great manure crisis of the late 19th century. It's where they were like gonna have to potentially abandon cities like London and New York because the horses were pooping and you need horses and carriages to remove the poop. And it was just, growing. And I just find that story really interesting because I talk about it a lot in class because the solution to it ended up being the cause of our current problems because the car. we don't have horses pooping in cities anymore, but the car which solved all those problems. The need to potentially abandon these cities ended up causing our current, or contributing heavily to our, current climate crisis today. I like to bring it up because I think in some ways it still offers hope because the crisis we see as insurmountable now could be solved tomorrow by some technology that we are not yet able to fathom. So

Caroline: 33:01

brother-in-law

Anne: 33:02

I end up bringing up a lot. I find myself talking about this weird historical thing.

Caroline: 33:06

yeah. My brother-in-law has often talked about how like it's definitely too late and countries are not gonna get it together to prevent, the rate of pollution. But he has faith that someone will come up with something that can save the planet a new technology or something.

Anne: 33:23

Let's hope so. I have hope. All right. Let's talk about what you think is the most disturbing part of this.

Caroline: 33:29

Okay. So I, I have a tie. decide which was worse. So one element of it spending a lot of time professionally in humanitarian response, this whole concept of white saviorism. I mean, I was trying to come up with. A more artistic way of saying it, I guess that might be received better by some listeners, but like, essentially this whole of you wanna help a population and see yourself as superior and I have the solution and I know the best way to help this population the road to hell is paved with that, right? This is a constant and continuing problem, that even people in positions of power in places that are actively looking to do this, they really feel like they're doing the right thing and they are not. That's one issue. And then the other, there was a great quote towards the end where it's like, you wanna believe that if some injustice is happening in the world, when people find out about it, they will do something about it. I think. Living in 2025 is just the constant disappointment that that never seems to happen. You know it's just not the case

Anne: 34:33

Yeah, there are a lot of injustices we know about them. I'm sure there's some we don't know about, too plenty. But yeah, nothing is happening. I mean, for me, the most disturbing part was just. The obvious penicillin was discovered, available, and they didn't give them access because they're more valuable as a cadaver. my grandfather spent like five years or something in a hospital with tuberculosis, which also became treatable after the discovery of antibiotics. He thought he was gonna die, right? And then he went on to get married and have kids because the treatment was made available to him. He wasn't studied just to see what would happen.'cause we know what happens with tuberculosis. So yeah, the study goals and the way it started were not great. But not providing treatment when it was available, allowing them to spread it to their partners, their families, their children, that is very, very despicable for me. Another disturbing aspect for me was that advertisement last chance for special free treatment. It's like click bait, you know, like this last chance sale ends now, just to manipulate them to come in and then subject them to a spinal tap, which is not treatment. It only gathers information. So very manipulative campaign with selfish goals that didn't benefit those men at all. Another thing I found disturbing was the deletion of the tapes with the testimony from the men. One of the things that is missing is their voices, their stories. Because I think so much of, getting people to care is by humanizing and we can humanize through stories, so I think the deletion of their voices, is very upsetting.

Caroline: 35:59

Yeah, I just don't understand how that was even allowed. I know that this is like pre-internet time, and so these recordings happen on physical things that need to be stored in a physical place, and I get that. I mean, I, I can never store all of the artwork My daughter creates in my house. I get it. But this feels like keeping somewhere in a record form. I just don't understand how anyone would justify destroying it.

Anne: 36:24

The justification was protecting Nurse Rivers. So I do wonder what did she say that might've been incriminating that they were trying to protect her from? But as is pointed out in medical apartheid, that also robbed her of her voice and her chance to defend herself.

Caroline: 36:38

Mm-hmm.

Anne: 36:39

now on our Stranger Things episode, we spent so much time on character and character Arc because there were so many characters. And on our Gray Gardens episode, we spent a lot of time on setting because that was what was so important. But this episode, I feel like our focus is on just the deeper horrors of this, many of which we've already discussed. But I think, uh, one of the deeper horrors is government experimentation on people in general. Most egregious, probably mangola, but there's so many examples. The Guatemalan prisoners we already discussed. I think I read somewhere, I don't know, 400 prisoners at the Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois were infected with malaria to see if anti-malarial treatments would work. In the book Medical Apartheid, they talk about Fannie Lou Hammer, who got what they refer to as a Mississippi appendectomy, which is sterilization without consent. She went in for some other thing and came out without a uterus, and that happened a lot. And then you've got Henrietta Lax. Have you heard of her?

Caroline: 37:36

Oh, of course

Anne: 37:37

Yeah. She died in 1951, but those cells are still being used to this day without her. Consent or even knowledge. So there's a, a book about it. The Immortal Life of Henrietta L I've never read it, but it's sitting on my shelf ready to go. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Caroline: 37:52

There is a sense well there's some messages in this country where I am, that racism was solved because we had a black president. And that we. Don't need to talk about these things that happen because they're over. First of all, quite presumptuous to assume they're over. but also, I think your point about recognizing the systemic elements that have created circumstances where some people are better off than others, that is an important thing that people be aware of and understand and acknowledge, because these things did not happen so long ago. And there's so many examples of them that work together to make it impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, et cetera, for so many communities, which by the way, it's not even possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. So I hate that saying in general, but

Anne: 38:42

Hate that saying.

Caroline: 38:43

Growing up learning about, Nazi Germany and about racism in the US I never felt like it's my fault and felt like a bad person. And all these justifications people are using for like, well, white children will feel bad about themselves.

Anne: 38:58

Yeah, bullshit. Stop that.

Caroline: 38:59

it's

Anne: 38:59

Yeah.

Caroline: 39:00

you know It's important to know these things happen for 1,000,001 reasons that have to do with the environment we all coexist in. I if you ignore all of this stuff, that's how ignorance flourishes, you know?

Anne: 39:14

I also think it's important in that discussion to point out that Tuskegee is one example of many, Like, and I think a lot of people point to that as, oh, well this was the bad thing, as if it wasn't the culmination and, well, not, I, I shouldn't even say culmination'cause it's not the end, These sort of things continued. And that book Medical Apartheid, I listened to about half of it. It's 19 hours long. I'm at about hour nine. As I was listening, I found myself wanting to write down like statistic after statistic quote after quote, disparity after disparity. And I had to remind myself, we're actually not covering that book. But it does place this in a context that I think is really important. It opens with Dr. James, Marian Sims, the renowned father of modern gynecology who has a statue in Central Park, but performed excruciating vaginal surgeries without anesthesia on enslaved women. Like an ACA they mentioned was operated on 30 something times. And then he took what he learned from their suffering to then operate on white women. And so the pain that was the foundation of these experiments was then used, not to help them, right? The benefits of the study done on black bodies was not distributed to them. So there's injustice there. It goes on, it talks about scientific racism, eugenics, these false ideas that like black bodies were impervious to pain and the history of putting people on display like the hot and taught Venus grave robing for dissection. And it draws this line between slavery and the display of black bodies and like zoos and circuses and surgical theaters and lynching photos to the objectification and dehumanization that led to a climate where the Tuskegee syphilis study seemed acceptable. So it's not an aberration, it's a pattern,

Caroline: 40:51

A thousand percent

Anne: 40:52

and I highly, highly, highly recommend that book. I, I've learned so much from it. Oh, and another thing that I learned from it, one of the horrors of this is that they offered these men. Burial to cover the cost of their burials. Now, they would take that both because they were poor, but also they want it to not end up in a potter's field, right? Because if you ended up in a potter's field, that was where historically people went to dig up bodies and take them for dissection. So the irony here is that perhaps, part of the reason they agreed to this was to actually avoid ending up on that autopsy table.

Caroline: 41:26

So insane. Do you have a plan for your body?

Anne: 41:28

Honestly, I don't care.

Caroline: 41:29

care Yeah

Anne: 41:30

Like I, I remember once we had this book of questions as a kid, and I think it asked the question about would you care if your body was just like left in the forest? And I remember being like, I don't care. And, but my mom, who's very Catholic, was very upset by that idea. So I don't know. I don't know if I'm, why I feel that way, but it doesn't, it doesn't bother me. I think I want my organs to go to somebody to help, you know, things like that. So yeah.

Caroline: 41:51

This is just like a meat vessel in my opinion. I just want it to be useful. That would be great. And I don't really care what happens after,'cause like, I don't see me and my body as being the same. Although it is the same while alive, so I'm not saying, I would be like, it's

Anne: 42:06

now,

Caroline: 42:06

if this, if I was supposedly, voluntarily signed up for study.

Anne: 42:12

And, you know, it's easy for us to say without this history of experimentation on bodies like ours to be like, I'm okay with it. You know, so I wanna acknowledge the, perhaps insensitivity of it. So I'm not saying that these men were wrong

Caroline: 42:25

No, no,

Anne: 42:25

to be wary of that.

Caroline: 42:26

Yeah, no. Just totally like our own. How do we connect with our physical body? Just me and you, not.

Anne: 42:32

Yeah. And you know, all this has resulted in the deeper horror, this legacy of mistrust and IA phobia. Though there are some questions of causality. I read this New York Times article that discussed a study about post Tuskegee distrust. So this is a quote from it. The researchers found that after 1972 when much of the truth behind Tuskegee was revealed, mistrust among African Americans towards the medical profession spiked, they found that the use of the healthcare system fell and that mortality increased years later. They hypothesized that each factor led to the next. The news caused African Americans to doubt the healthcare profession was interested in their wellbeing. They stopped going to the doctor, and this led to earlier deaths. And they even showed that the closer you live to Macon County, Alabama, where the study took place, the greater the effect. And you know, the writer talks about like, there's flaws in this study, but he concludes basically what is being said in this, medical apartheid book. That mistrust in the healthcare system has multiple factors. It can come from huge lapses in ethics like the Tuskegee study, but it can also come from the daily ways in which the system treats people differently than others. It can come from small missteps in the interpretation of results, the causes of the disparity we see are systemic and would it probably exist without Tuskegee? So it's, it's again, just pointing out, it's more than this.

Caroline: 43:41

It's so interesting because I feel the opposite the way than the way I think US government does. And, you know, police, departments do. If I'm in a situation where I'm learning about something that occurred and people didn't do the right thing, or they made a mistake, human mistake, inhuman mistake, which this study is inhuman mistake, but runs the gamut. If people just keep insisting they did nothing wrong, and they're infallible, that just makes me never trust anything. The fact that police departments will double down even when it's shown that, inappropriate conduct occurred and, and a person who shouldn't have been jailed was jailed, et cetera, that just makes me be like, I don't ever believe you because you can't even admit when clearly you're wrong. The effort to be like we were all acting in good faith and race had nothing to do with it and blah, blah, blah. That insistence just doubles my opinion that they can't be trusted as a white

Anne: 44:35

Yeah.

Caroline: 44:36

So like course you wouldn't believe it as a black person who has seized evidence constantly of racism in your daily life, perpetrated by your government,

Anne: 44:44

one quote I heard somewhere was, we shouldn't be putting it on black people to trust the system. We should make a trustworthy system.

Caroline: 44:53

Yeah, totally,

Anne: 44:54

Yeah. Another discussion I. Found interesting was the slippery slope of morality that Michael describes into unethical behavior that often it's small steps, a deeper horror is how easy it is to perhaps become a John Cutler or a vola. Like most of us don't think we're capable of evil. We think we never just follow orders if we were asked to do something horrific that we'd be joining the resistance. Most people just adjust the morality to protect themselves and their, their view of themselves. And it reminded me of this book of, I can't remember what it's called, Louis de Burner who wrote Carly's Mandolin. Do you remember that movie book? It was one of my favorite books for a while, but he also wrote a trilogy. And the first one is called The War of Don Emmanuel's, never Parts. And there's this one part of it that has always stuck with me. I must have read it like 20 years ago. But there's this character who's basically like a normal soldier, like a bureaucrat in the army, and he is given the job of overseeing this prison. And it's this slow slippery step to him becoming this sadistic torturer and jailer. It doesn't start that way, and it's just always something that stuck with me. Oh, here's my Macbeth reference. Macbeth says, I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wait No more returning. Whereas tedious as going over. So one murder begets another one, one transgression begets the next. how do nonviolent people commit atrocities for their job or government? Because it happens all the time.

Caroline: 46:14

And I do think circumstance can play a role. People who are economically disadvantaged, feel like they have to, I mean, I've never been taken advantage of in this way, but even when I had like a job that was torturous and. really wanted to quit. I was like, but I need health insurance. You

Anne: 46:32

Yeah,

Caroline: 46:32

whatever it does to me,

Anne: 46:34

I remember I did some research on scammers. These people who are calling up and scamming old people. Because I was thinking, who are these despicable people who would do this? Right? And sometimes they are trapped in scam factories, They've taken a job because they are economically desperate. They're not necessarily bad people. They have no other options. I mean, this speaks to the importance of having a social safety net because nobody wants to be a criminal, Or very few people wanna be a criminal. Most people do it out of economic necessity. They take a step down the wrong path, it becomes easier. And there you have it.

Caroline: 47:07

Yeah. And we come back to, I think early on, we mentioned ever after and the ever after quote, early on in our podcast journey.

Anne: 47:15

Okay. I was like, did we talk about that today?

Caroline: 47:16

No, no, no. That is from Sir Thomas Moore Utopia. When she says, if you suffer your people to be ill educated and they're manners to be corrupted from their infancy and then punish them for those crimes, what else can be concluded except that you create thieves and then punish them, or, I don't remember the end of it,

Anne: 47:32

Thank you, Cinderella.

Caroline: 47:34

thank you. Ever after the best historical, non historical fiction. I just said nonfiction.

Anne: 47:41

It's, it's, it's fiction.

Caroline: 47:42

Yeah. Sarah also makes a great comment about like, which is the point I'd never thought of before. Like, they would never call the death star. The death star. They

Anne: 47:51

Yeah.

Caroline: 47:51

the Hope Star. You all these things work together to provide an environment where things like this can occur.

Anne: 47:59

I think another deeper horror just about syphilis in general is, how women have been blamed for it throughout history. in the dollop episode, they said something about like 18,000 women who were sex workers were detained and institutionalized for potentially having syphilis. It was called the harlot's disease. The word venereal comes from Venus because you get it from women. And it's like, you know what, it does take two to tango here. And who's seeking out the sex workers, right?

Caroline: 48:24

Thousand percent. I always get so frustrated that the sex workers get arrested and the John don't, I don't really understand that.

Anne: 48:30

also, we've Talked about this already, but the stigmatization of diseases, the association with some kind of moral transgression, throughout history. It's, been, attributed to as, as, as God's punishment for bad behavior. And if you are saying, well, you deserve to have this disease because you've done something wrong, it's just, again, easier to dehumanize the victims of it. And the reality is it's a contagion. It can come for any of us. another deeper horror is the dangerous combination of racism plus capitalism. If you are using racism to justify dehumanization, then you can profit off of them. Intergenerational trauma. We've talked before about how trauma can change your genes. I don't remember which episode that was. So whether it's actual genetic change or the passing down of Lauren's stories, centuries of poor treatment it's, it's changed people, it's made them distrustful. Throughout history medicine and doctors and researchers have gotten stuff wrong, When they thought Mercury was the way to treat this, that was wrong. More recently we've got the opioid epidemic, which was caused by pharmaceutical companies telling us these things were non-addictive and safe, which they weren't. For the average person, there's the thalidomide causing birth defects. So sometimes medicine does get things wrong by mistake, but it's even worse when they're doing it on purpose because it gives fodder to the conspiracy theorists, for example, who are against vaccines. It's hard to argue with that because it's like, yeah, they did get that wrong.

Caroline: 49:50

I think the litigious propensity in this country has it. Led to a lot of the reason why, like, insurance is insane and, and all of that stuff. So I wanna acknowledge that it is challenging to be in the medical profession. There are so many things that you can't normally account for when you are trying to do a sound ethical scientific study, for example. And I do think there's a lot of people who are doing their best and should not be prosecuted for that. But it's not, it's not a excuse for, immunity in all things.

Anne: 50:20

Another thing I found disturbing was the Lack of empathy by people in charge in general. So I found this New York Times article, and I want you to tell me when you think this article was published. So quote that.

Caroline: 50:30

but go ahead.

Anne: 50:32

Bad blood is as contemporary in its implications as yesterday's Medicaid rollbacks today's food stamp cuts or tomorrow's definition of the truly needy. When do you think that was written? It's 1981, but it could be yesterday, are talking this will be released sometime in December, but we are just coming off the end of a shutdown when a lot of people who relied on Snap lost access to food. and there was no empathy for them from the people in charge.

Caroline: 50:56

and people will still lose access to Medicaid and Medicare,

Anne: 51:00

Yeah. All right. Do you have questions, criticism,

Caroline: 51:04

I really think this podcast is great. I know we're talking about the study in general, but I do think this podcast is incredibly thorough. They give a lot of names, a lot of great resources. I, I think they did a, a really good job of also balancing the, what you need to know with the human elements of things. So, no, not really. What about you?

Anne: 51:24

I mean, obviously I have criticism of the study, which I think we've already discussed. I don't have criticism of the podcast for what it is, a conversation between two people. Like, it's not pretending to be a documentary. Challenging and correcting the view, the way we view the past, it's limited, right? Just like what we're doing is limited. But I would love to see, and maybe this exists, a documentary that includes more black voices, explores that intergenerational trauma, you know, perhaps children and grandchildren of the victims today. yeah. So I'd wanna see something like that and maybe that's out there. I, I tend not to look for documentaries when I

Caroline: 51:57

when

Anne: 51:57

am researching. I just listen to podcasts. That's my favorite way to gain information, but.

Caroline: 52:01

But no, I will tell you because when we were talking about what did Stranger Things in me from a true crime perspective, and I was like, I know I wanted to do this study, but I wasn't sure that this podcast was going to be the best vehicle for it. But I also was trying to do research on like, what else is there that I can watch or consume where I can learn about this? And there wasn't enough I really wish there was more than this Miss Evers boys movie and other stuff like that to make this more of a well-known thing, because I struggled to find another I'm happy with this recommendation, but yeah, there's not enough out there about this, in my

Anne: 52:38

Yeah, but if you're looking to learn more, distrust and disparities, they have a two-parter. Sean King, the breakdown has an episode on this. It was released. Around the time of vaccine hesitancy. And he was kind of breaking down the differences in why the vaccine is not, why you should take the vaccine, basically. Uh, I also came across a podcast called Black History for White People, which is a discussion between white hosts and a black host. And the woman, Katina is also, in healthcare, and she works at a hospital and she talks about the sense of relief that patients get when they see her. And I think that's one of the, I guess, survival takes we can take from this. What do we learn is the importance of representation. Whether it's the board of a study, the researchers doing it, if you've got more representation, you're gonna have more trust. Then there's also this podcast 1619, it's called How The Bad Blood Started. It's not specifically about Tuskegee, but it includes a testimony from a woman today who's originally from Alabama and is the grandchild of a man and just, you know, talking about the legacy of this fear and mistrust that persists. So that was worth listening to as well. Do we have any questions?

Caroline: 53:45

Uh, no.

Anne: 53:47

One question I have was it worse than it seems, Was the intention to use them for blood and making a test and profiting off of them? Was that just a byproduct, like, oh, we didn't mean it this way, but you know, we've got all this blood, we might as well use it. Was that actually part of the original underlying intentions? Were they being used as living vectors? And it sounds like this is suspected, but it's not confirmed whether it's true or not. And that's something I'd like to know.

Caroline: 54:11

I think I of assume there's even more mal-intent than we know.

Anne: 54:16

Yeah. I'd also like to know why isn't it called the PHS syphilis study? Why does it need to, bring down Tuskegee University? You know, it wasn't originally their idea.

Caroline: 54:25

Yeah.

Anne: 54:25

question I,

Caroline: 54:27

That would play into the distrust aspect because this is a historically black college, right?

Anne: 54:32

yeah. Its reputation was tainted by its association with this. Another just kind of thing I wonder is what are we doing today that we'll look back on in the future as insane, right? whether it's because it's unethical or because it's just a misunderstanding of our bodies. Like we used to think it was the four humors that impacted our personalities and our physical health. You know, that we use bleeding, that we use mercury. Well, we look back on chemotherapy as barbaric. So that's one of those interesting things that I, yeah, I wanna know what we're doing now. Okay. do we learn from this survival? How do we make a better world? We've already talked about representation. American metal research researchers are a fairly homogenous group, and that lies at the heart of the problem according to the writer of medical apartheid. This is also explored in that show The Pit. Have you seen that yet?

Caroline: 55:21

No.

Anne: 55:22

There's a storyline about a woman who comes in with sickle cell anemia and the doctors are just like not getting it. And it is, uh, a woman of color who realizes what's going on.

Caroline: 55:32

Yeah, and I, I think not just in medical situations, but in all situations where people want to do good, right? Like I said, humanitarian response, impression of what's going to be right for that community may or may not be correct, but either way, providing agency to the people you're trying to support is the way to start. And I just wanna plug, like on designated funds or, or mutual aid as an element of that because the more that you prescribe the way you want your gift to be spent, the more really dehumanizing, condescending,

Anne: 56:06

Infantalizing.

Caroline: 56:07

infantalizing. And it's really not, true charity in the sense like, if you wanna help someone, you should just help them and let them decide what's the most helpful way. And I think, this obsession with like, are they gonna buy cupcakes for their kids' birthday instead of like milk?

Anne: 56:23

God forbid.

Caroline: 56:24

on. You know, and I'd much rather accidentally support someone who's not doing it the way I would've if it means all the other people are getting the support they need,

Anne: 56:34

Definitely. another, important lesson is the importance of a thriving media. We discussed this in our jaws spotlight and catch and kill episodes, because even though all that info was there, it was out. It wasn't surreptitious, it was readily available. It was journalism that brought the study to light eventually. And go get screened. If you're sexually active, syphilis is on the rise, right? Don't be afraid of the stigma. Find out. Take care of it.

Caroline: 56:58

So true.

Anne: 56:59

All right. Pallet cleanser.

Caroline: 57:00

Okay, so for my palate cleanser on TikTok, there is a new handle that I found called Max Rebo Productions. Any Star Wars fan will know how to spell that. Basically it's somebody taking all the classic Star Wars toys, setting it to audio from other movies like Karate Kid or Home Alone, you know, like all these random movies from the nineties, these classic scenes, my cousin Vinny, stuff like that. And just having the Star Wars characters play it out, it, it's really lovely.

Anne: 57:30

That's so cute. That sounds super fun. All right. Homework. I really struggled with what to choose for our next, horror choice because after our Gray Gardens episode, I was like, weapons because Aunt Gladys wears headscarves. That reminded me of little Edie Beale. And then as I was watching this, I was thinking sinners because the setting in Mississippi focuses on sharecroppers and the racism they experienced. But I ultimately, I watched the new Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein film that just came out on Netflix. And the way Victor. Treats his creation with such disdain and carelessness I think really ties in here. And what finally clinched it for me was a character in Frankenstein has syphilis and says, A Night with Venus, A Lifetime with Mercury. So there's this direct connection and I was like, oh my God, I'm researching Tuskegee syphilis and watching this character say that line unless you're willing to grant me a sinners weapons, Frankenstein horror triple hitter.

Caroline: 58:24

Uh, no, but I am

Anne: 58:26

Just kidding.

Caroline: 58:27

to see Frankenstein. Like I've heard

Anne: 58:29

Yeah,

Caroline: 58:29

things about it, so I'm very excited.

Anne: 58:31

we will cover both sinners and weapons at some point too. Okay. So watch Frankenstein. It's on Netflix. It's fantastic. Read the book too if you have time. But in between, this episode and Frankenstein, it's Christmas. So we are going to read for the first time for me a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I mean, it's something that we all know so well, but I haven't actually read it. All right. So do you have any recommendations?

Caroline: 58:55

yes, I have a lot. The first and foremost I wanna say, I know that I mentioned before that I was, inspired and motivated by Amanda Jacobson from Wine and Crime and, passages podcast to look into anti-racism coaching. I was messaging with my former anti-racism coach today, just to make sure she didn't mind if I plugged her. Her name is, Makita Penny Cook. and we'll, include her information in the show notes and stuff like that, but highly recommend I did it over Zoom with her during COVID and everything like that, so it really doesn't matter where you are. She's great from her. I learned about a podcast called Seeing White. Episodes one through three we're part of the initial part of getting to know her, and I don't wanna give away all her secrets. There was a lot of stuff that she introduced me to that I really credit, with a lot of my perspectives today and, and opening my eyes. I also wanna recommend anything by Dale Huey or Taana Hassi Coates. They are incredible books. Surrender White People between the World and Me. There's, a lot of great information you can get from, hearing. Black Voices discuss these issues. I already mentioned that you're wrong about episodes. I also wanted to mention there's a podcast. Sounds like a cult. I think I, we've mentioned before they had an episode on

Anne: 1:00:10

it's good.

Caroline: 1:00:10

that really helped me also kind of wake up my eyes to the humanitarian response, kind of institutional, potentially unintentional racism that I was experiencing in that So, yeah, that's, that's kind of it for me. I.

Anne: 1:00:25

Okay, well, uh, the podcast I've mentioned Black History for White People, distrust and Disparities. Sean King, the Breakdown, the 1619 podcast, and I highly recommend the book Medical Apartheid, which is sourced in this. If you subscribe to Wondery, you can access American Scandal season on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. So the first episode is free if you wanna check it out. As I said, if you wanna learn more about syphilis in general, there's the dollop and this podcast will kill you on the dollop. Gareth does this like really ridiculous stereotypical Boston accent because syphilis was present in Colonial Boston and it's really, really funny. So check out that episode. Let's see. The nonfiction book, the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, another story that explores the use of black bodies, in this case, black cells and medical research sinners, as I already said. One of the things that happens is that in that is the black sharecroppers have to pay with these wooden nickels, the, the currency that they could only spend at the general store, which kind of speaks to the, issue of debt slavery that sharecroppers experienced. I recommend Mike Flanagan's the fall of the House of Usher, because it's about a Sackler like family that. Traffics and blood money selling bad drugs. And just because it was in my head the entire time I was, you know, listening to stuff about this is, Taylor Swift's bad blood. It has nothing to do with this, but just every time I saw bad blood, it was just straight into my head.

Caroline: 1:01:42

Totally.

Anne: 1:01:43

also, one of my favorite short story writers is Ted Chang and he has a story called The Lifecycle of Software Objects. And it's about dehumanization, what people are willing to do to digital pets that are actually sentient. It's futuristic in sci-fi, but it's really interesting. And Westworld is along the same lines, like what people will do to beings that they see as less than human. That's it for me. Anything else you wanna talk about?

Caroline: 1:02:08

Also Seinfeld.

Anne: 1:02:09

Seinfeld, vle,

Caroline: 1:02:10

a bad

Anne: 1:02:10

save and a.

Caroline: 1:02:10

Never a bad day, and you wanna be my latex salesman. That's

Anne: 1:02:14

Yes.

Caroline: 1:02:15

this whole time about these scientists.

Anne: 1:02:18

All right. Thank you for listening. If you have any feedback or any recommendations you want to make, please contact us at, drawn to Darkness pod@gmail.com. You can also find us on Instagram or Facebook, write a review on iTunes. Most importantly, tell a friend word of mouth is the best advertisement. And if like Shirley Jackson, you delight in what you fear, join us again in two weeks here at Drawn to Darkness. Special shout out to Nancy Ano who painted our cover art. You can find her on Instagram at Nancy ano and to Harry Kidd for our intro and outro music. You can find him on Instagram at Harry J. Kidd and on Spotify.