Email us for help
Loading...
Premium support
Log Out
Our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy have changed. We think you'll like them better this way.
The Church and the Vaccine
Topical Discussion
Black communities often distrust the government and are skeptical of medical authorities. Drake said there are good historical reasons for this, citing the racist writings of 19th-century medical doctors who used science to justify slavery and 20th-century medical experiments performed on unsuspecting African Americans.
The most notorious, Drake said, was the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which continued into the 1970s. The United States Public Health Service promised health care to 600 black people in Alabama in exchange for participation in a study. The health service identified 399 of the men who had latent syphilis but did nothing to help them. Instead, the service chose to study what would happen if they did nothing to treat the illness. So what is the role of the black church and the vaccine?
