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Our society seems to have given political and social discussions over to a form of mob rule. People fear for their jobs if they express an opinion that is not accepted by their colleagues or employer. We've recently seen, for example, announcements from the boss at Disney World saying that his employees are enraged at the Florida so-called "Don't say gay" law which they claim restricts LGBTQWTF rights. This came after some Disney World employees protested that the company hadn't criticized the law enough.
And then, there are other employees complaining about a hostile work environment at Disney because they
aren't woke enough. Rather than pursue the making of money,
Disney is devolving into an internal culture war over issues that ought
not to be within the purview of a private, publicly-traded for-profit
company. But, as has been clear since at least the days of
Vladimir Lenin if not Karl Marx himself, anything corrupted by leftism
fast becomes hell on earth.
This isn't a new phenomenon - it's more obvious merely because
there's more pushback these days than once there was to false
narratives of the mainstream opinionmakers. In times gone by,
these mostly went unchallenged and sank into the historical zeitgest of
received wisdom that "everyone knows" - despite being, as we'd say
today, fake news!
Consider the famously infamous "Tuskegee Study of untreated syphilis in the Negro male." Spiked described the common perception of this 1930s medical research study:
The "Tuskegee Study" was conducted in Macon County, Alabama between 1932 and 1972, and is often associated with the image of monstrous government researchers allowing black patients to suffer from a curable and devastating infection (syphilis), so as to document the natural course of the disease.
Some believe that this study reduced the black community's trust in the
medical system enough to be a reason why the percentage of blacks
who have accepted the Covid shot is lower than among other
groups. Other times, it's compared to Nazi psychopaths like Dr.
Josef Mengele who performed ghastly experiments on helpless
concentration camp victims. In both cases, we're told, the mask
of science was used to cover over gross inhumanity and barbaric abuses
for no greater purpose than lab-coat jollies.
The study, which was conducted openly and without secrecy, is now commonly and routinely portrayed in one or more of the following ways: as racist science; as 'a programme of controlled genocide' (whites against blacks); as a violation of basic human rights; as a study by the US government's Public Health Service in which effective treatment for a fatal disease was withheld from a poor, uneducated, vulnerable minority group in disregard of their health and safety; as a callous scientific pursuit that ignored human values and was 'almost beyond belief and human compassion'; as 'an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens'; as a research project in which the government gave syphilis to black people so as to scientifically document the natural course of the illness; as an 'experiment' in which human beings were treated like guinea pigs or laboratory rats.
The study is often cited as a compelling example of why we need the Institutional Review Board (IRB) system of ethical surveillance and control for research with human subjects - a system that is now applied by most US universities to all research with human beings, regardless of funding source (public, private or personal) and research topic (medical or non-medical). [emphasis added]
One of the problems perceived with the Tuskegee study is that the men who participated weren't told what the study was all about. However, this wasn't anything unique to this particular group - at the time, doctors routinely misled patients to further the "greater good."
Prior to WWII, our modern-day medical concept of "informed consent" hadn't yet been articulated. That came about because of worldwide horror at the medical experiments which Nazis like Dr. Mengele had carried out in concentration camps. After the Nuremberg trials, the 1947 "Nuremberg Code" established the principle that people had to volunteer to participate in medical experiments, that they had to understand the purposes, goals, and risks of participating, be given the right to refuse, and the right to withdraw from the study at any time.
The New England Journal of Medicine discussed the Nuremberg code in their 50-year follow-up article of 1997:
Because of its link with the horrors of World War II and the use of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps for medical experimentation, debate continues today about the authority of the Code, its applicability to modern medical research, and even its authorship.
Their article discusses the legalities and ethics involved at some length. But, it's ludicrously unfair to condemn the Tuskegee experimenters for not following a code that didn't even exist until decades later, and, as the NEJM points out, its applicability was still being debated 50 years after that in 1997.
Strange as it may seem to us today, we have to understand that the past is a foreign country. For many decades following 1937 and for centuries previously:
In the traditional Hippocratic doctor-patient relationship, the patient is silent and dutifully obedient to the beneficent and trusted physician. [just as our progressive ruling elites expect silent obedience to their every pronouncement even today - ed]
We've since learned that unquestioning obedience to authorities is a Bad Idea, whether they be wearing lab coats, sharp suits, or Hugo Boss uniforms. Our modern approach to doctors more closely resembles Ronald Reagan's sage advice to "Trust but verify". Of course, modern communication methods make this enormously easier than it would have been for anyone in 1937, to say nothing of illiterate rural impoverished farm laborers.
What's more, experience shows that high-sounding principles such as "informed consent" aren't of much value without agreed standards for enforcing them. The IRB law was passed in 1974, and a new agency set up to evaluate proposals for research involving people... and yes, for those reading closely, the legal requirement came about after the Tuskegee experiments had already ended. Doesn't our Constitution say something about forbidding ex post facto laws, that is, holding people to the standard of a law that didn't exist when they were violating it?
So, what's the point of the Tuskegee experiment? It's used as an all-purpose hammer against white people, science, public health research, and basically any criticism of black people for not following medical advice, as so many choose not to do - many times to their own hurt, but occasionally to their benefit. But the hidden reality is, yes, the study participants weren't told much about their disease, because there wasn't much to tell.
Were treatments withheld from them? Yes, but, Depression-era treatments for syphilis were fantastically expensive, very painful, took a long time, had very unpleasant side effects, and hadn't been shown to be particularly effective. There were a wide variety of known drug treatments collectively known as "arsenical compounds" - yes, as the name implies, they contained arsenic, a powerful and deadly poison. To this day, it's not clear that putting arsenic in your bloodstream did anyone any good - in fact, one of the core goals of the Tuskegee experiment was to compare the results of patients who had basically no likelihood of ever using the available treatments anyway with other patients who did receive them, to see if there was any difference. There didn't appear to be any.
Today, of course, there are effective antibiotic treatments like penicillin for syphilis, but those weren't available until WWII, and not widely in use until the mid-1950s. Were the patients told about or offered those? No - because, by then, they'd been infected for decades, and a medical fact about syphilis that was known at the time, and is still solid science today, is that
...after the early stages of infection, the vast majority of people who have untreated syphilis either remain asymptomatic all of their lives or else spontaneously recover from the disease. For most people, a syphilis infection is either a self-limiting or self-correcting disease
Nobody stopped any of the participants who were still suffering in, say, 1955, from seeking treatment. But it's not known that there even were any such - as is normal and expected with syphilis, after 20 years of having it, it really doesn't harm you anymore, so why worry about treating a non-problem?
Thus, the Tuskegee legend is basically a Big Lie - a blood libel
against enemies of, variously, the left, Black Power, or any of their
multifarious allies and fellow-travelers, mostly white people.
The Tuskegee doctors
were trying to legitimately help both their patients and the world at
large, and for this they're slandered as Nazis.
When the Covid virus and its accompanying "vaccine" came along, there was debate about applying the Nuremberg code to it. The British organization Fullfact addressed the question whether the code applied:
We spoke to experts in medical ethics, healthcare law and social epidemiology about the Nuremberg Code and whether its principles are applicable to the current vaccine roll out or vaccine passports.
Informed consent is still required for those receiving the Covid-19 or any other vaccine. But Professor Emma Cave, professor of healthcare law at Durham University, explained that the need for this does not come from the Nuremberg Code. [emphasis added]
She said: "The Nuremberg Code relates to research, where the emphasis of informed consent requirements is on preventing the research participants from being used as a means to an end."
"Informed consent for treatment serves a slightly different purpose. It prevents a battery or negligence, and protects the autonomy rights of the patient. So informed consent is doing slightly different things in relation to research and treatment."
In Britain anyway, "informed consent" is required "for those receiving the Covid-19 or any other vaccine." What about the US?
Our FDA publishes "A Guide to Informed Consent " which is intended to guide Institutional Review Boards who are charged with approving or disapproving a medical investigation.
For studies that are subject to the requirements of the FDA regulations, the informed consent documents should meet the requirements of 21 CFR 50.20 and contain the information required by each of the eight basic elements of 21 CFR 50.25(a), and each of the six elements of 21 CFR 50.25(b) that is appropriate to the study. IRBs have the final authority for ensuring the adequacy of the information in the informed consent document. [emphasis added]
What's this gobbledygook trying to obfuscate? The FDA definition requires informed consent for research studies like Tuskegee, but, unlike the British government, our government doesn't seem to require informed consent for "treatments" like the Covid vaccine.
The American Medical Association goes a bit further:
Informed consent to medical treatment is fundamental in both ethics and law. Patients have the right to receive information and ask questions about recommended treatments so that they can make well-considered decisions about care. Successful communication in the patient-physician relationship fosters trust and supports shared decision making.
HG.org discusses informed consent law:
Informed Consent Law covers the legal aspect regarding an individual's right to be informed of and consent to a procedure or treatment suggested by a physician or professional. [emphasis in the original]
The thrust of informed consent is that a patient must be informed of
the risks of a procedure and be given the right to refuse the
procedure if the patent isn't convinced that it will be
beneficial. This may not be specifically part of the Nuremberg
Code, but certainly follows similar moral principles, which, on paper
at least, are the foundation of humane medical research, practice, and
treatment.
We won't go over the many, many reasons a person might refuse to receive what some call the "Fauci ouchie" and others the "death jab" because there is simply too much material. According to the principles of the Nuremberg Code, though, they are irrelevant - if a patient truly believes that a treatment will turn them into a space alien, they have an absolute right to refuse that treatment even for a ludicrously absurd nonreason.
Of course, fears of covid vaccines are far more rational than
that. Authorities in
America and in Europe are making it hard to determine whether
reports of highly active athletes dying from heart failure after
receiving the vaccine are accurate. These attempts to conceal
data or
mislead patients about the vaccine make it difficult to persuade
skeptics to receive the "clot shot" - not because they know it to be
dangerous, but because they know they're being lied to about it.
How can consent be informed
when data are seen to be hidden or manipulated?
The Biden administration urged employers to require that their
employees receive the shot as a condition of continued
employment. The
administration also urged OSHA to write a rule requiring employers to
require the shot. Coercion, by definition, makes a mockery of "informed
consent" - you aren't "consenting" when you do something only because
someone else is holding a gun to your head.
At least SCOTUS vacated that tyrranical imposition on the grounds that Covid is not a workplace hazard - it can be picked up anywhere, and OSHA has no authority outside the workplace. This allowed companies to decline to enforce the requirement, but many still do, by their own choice.
SCOTUS did permit the government to require that organizations
receiving money from Medicaid or Medicare - just about all
medical practitioners - to require their employees to receive the
vaccination regardless of whether the employee had recovered from Covid
or not. Some number of medical employees refused the shot; nobody
can agree on how many or what their reasons were, but there's no
question that medical employment took a major hit. Doesn't
that seem like the wrong course in the midst of a world-girdling
pandemic?
We know a doctor who was severely reprimanded for discussing possible side effects of the Covid shot with patients. His hospital's finances would suffer if employees were found to be spreading negative information about the shot. When he was told to shut up, he resigned. Enough health workers quit that many hospitals still suffer from a staff shortage.
As a practical matter, we're back to the conditions of the Tuskegee
experiment, or worse. At best, our medical authorities are
concealing evidence about possible treatments from the public; at
worst, they are knowingly giving worthless or harmful treatments, which
the Tuskegee experimenters never contemplated doing to their
patients. Far from even learning the supposed lesson from
Tuskegee, we're actually making the same mistakes as previously falsely
advertised but on a far grander scale!
As usual, the progressives in our government are so
concerned with humanity that they're willing to sacrifice individual
people on the altar of whatever they see as the greater good, so long
as it furthers their own personal power. Ever hear of the "Covid billionaires?"
We're told that this brand-new type of "vaccine," which clearly doesn't actually prevent the illness but only reduces its severity, is so safe and effective that everyone must take it. But as Reuters reports, people who are injured by the vaccine are out of luck. We lost confidence when the vaccine makers were granted total immunity from any consequences for injuring a patient. The makers must know something we don't or they wouldn't have demanded immunity.
In spite of the extremely hasty process of approving the Covid vaccine, its use is regarded as a "treatment" instead of a "study." That is why SCOTUS was able to disregard informed consent for medical employees - the law itself speaks only to studies, not treatments.
The Tuskegee study is blamed for creating distrust of the medical system among blacks and other minorities; perhaps the false advertising of the supposed evils of Tuskegee contributed to that distrust. But our medical authorities have, in reality, done many things which make the public legitimately distrust them.
For example, Johns Hopkins University showed that lockdowns and other Covid measures had little or no effect, but the media ignored the study. Johns Hopkins also published a study of all deaths form all causes during 2018 through 2020 which argued not only that total deaths didn't go up much beyond what we'd expect of a bad flu year, that many deaths were falsely counted as Covid deaths:
Interestingly, as depicted in the table below, the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19. This suggests, according to Briand [the lead author], that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19.
The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease. [emphasis added]
"All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary," Briand concluded. [emphasis added]
The URL for the article doesn't point to the Johns Hopkins web site - it can't, because the article was removed from the official site a few hours after it was published for fear that it might be misinterpreted. At the time, fear of Covid was being used to justify emergency measures which gave enormous power to unelected bureaucrats. These restrictions were also harming our economy, which was going to be one of Mr. Trump's major claims to be re-elected. Poking holes in Covid statistics might have led people not to trust the Covid narrative, which wouldn't do at all.
As if to confirm the impression that medical authorities are concealing facts, the New York Times reported that the CDC is holding back a great deal of detailed information about Covid cases, hospitalizations, and wastewater studies. The Times quoted Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C., as saying that the CDC was afraid that the data might be - aha! - misinterpreted.
The Times also quoted Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundations Pandemic Prevention Institute, as pointing out, " The C.D.C. is a political organization as much as it is a public health organization. " We certainly agree with that observation.
Because few people any longer trust statistics about Covid deaths in any country, statisticians have been comparing deaths in each week of our two Covid years with deaths during those same weeks in earlier years. New York Magazine published an analysis which explains why our CDC, which like most bureaucracies owes political allegiance to the Biden administration and Democrats generally, would want to hide or spin Covid information:
On February 1, 2021, just after the inauguration of Joe Biden, the U.S. had registered, according to The Economist, 178 excess deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, quite close to Britain's 166, Belgium's 162, and Portugal's 201. Fast-forward a year and those gaps have exploded. The U.S. has now registered 330 excess deaths per 100,000 - meaning our total has roughly doubled. In Britain, the excess mortality grew only 30 percent; in Portugal, it was 17 percent. [emphasis added]
The gaps between deaths in the U.S. and countries that had done better in the first year of the pandemic, like Germany or Iceland, have gotten even bigger. If the U.S. had the same cumulative excess mortality of Germany, it would have had 600,000 fewer deaths. If it had the excess mortality of Iceland, it would have had a million fewer deaths - and would have only lost about 100,000 Americans in total.
How did this happen?
Candidate Biden told President Trump during one of the debates that any President who had presided over so many American deaths was unfit for office. Now that he has presided over many more Covid fatalities than Mr. Trump, what would he say if someone were to ask him about his being unfit for office?
Progressives in our government have spent the Covid years demanding that we "follow the science" and obey them blindly, but we can see that they reject, hide, or spin any data that conflicts with their preferred course of action, reflects well on the Trump administration, or which reflects poorly on the Biden administration.
How could CDC data be "misinterpreted?" What if the data show that masking wasn't useful or that lockdowns caused more deaths than slowing the spread of Covid prevented? Or that vaccination causes serious heart problems in many healthy young men, or makes infection by one of the new variants more likely?
It took 40 years, the
medical horrors of the Nazi medical experiments during WWII, and
increased public
awareness of the claimed details of the Tuskegee study to get informed
consent form medical studies onto the legislative radar. This led
to the 1974
regulations establishing the Institutional
Review
Board (IRB) to review medical experiments.
A half-century later, public health agencies seem to have gone out of their way to decrease or destroy confidence in both their expertise and their honesty. As we see it, more and more information about negative effects of the jab, more evidence that taxpayer-dollars-funded "gain of function" virus research in China, and increased credibility of the "lab leak" theory are leaking out.
We hope it doesn't take 40 years and another World War to re-establish enforceable informed consent for medical treatment, and a bit more effective oversight of medical research that reeks more of Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Mengele than of any doctor we'd want!