Quickies
Quickies: Bill Nye Fights for Science, Gaming Misogyny, and Comic Book Parents
- Tuskegee Syphilis Study Recruitment Letter – An example of the letter sent out to some black men in Alabama, in one of the most infamous cases of unethical science.
- Gaming Misogyny Gets Infinite Lives: Zoe Quinn, Virtual Rape, and Sexism – “A lady developer was harassed by her vindictive ex-boyfriend. Some gamers ‘rape’ other avatars in Grand Theft Auto V. Is there no game over to sexism in the industry?”
- Bill Nye Fights Back – “How a mild-mannered children’s celebrity plans to save science in America—or go down swinging.”
- Bob Motley, Last Surviving Negro League Ump, Recalls Baseball History – Read about this man’s amazing career. I don’t even like baseball that much and I found it interesting. (Motley also helped to found a museum dedicated to the history of the Negro League.)
- The Two Very Different Worlds of Ferguson – “The white community is worried about the city’s image. The black community wants justice.” Nothing like trying to sweep systemic racism under the rug like it doesn’t exist.
- Is Batman the world’s worst dad? – “The most disastrous comic book parents If mommyblogs existed in the comics universe, they would surely tear these characters apart”
- I am the woman you laughed at on the Internet – A good reminder that there is more to “funny” internet photos than we know.
In the Tuskegee study the men were injected with a virus giving them a fatal communicable disease and left to die without treatment. Why is that not a murder enquiry?
There is a very common pattern with the establishment. They do something in secret that they know would never be allowed if it was public knowledge. Then they worry that the exposure of their perfidy would damage public confidence and use that concern to justify further secrecy.
No, you have read it wrong.
Black men who already had syphilis were not treated and were kept from even knowing they had the disease or that there was a cure.
Disgusting yes, but the government did not give them the syphilis. I believe there were investigations at the time of the revelation of this experiment but I don’t know if any charges were ever filed.
@mr misconception – hang on, if you read the comments to that article, some people believe that injection with the virus did happen – based on a letter from a nurse. ?conspiracy theory or fact…
From what I can find it is a straight up conspiracy based on the apology of Nurse Eunice Rivers. That apology does not implicate the government, any doctors, or Nurse Rivers herself as having given the disease to any of the subjects, just the withholding of true treatments.
It’s awful and perhaps the worst example of unethical medical experiments this side of the holocaust and a textbook example of an actual conspiracy, but giving the victims the disease isn’t part of it even though it is widely believed. Can’t really say that belief in that part of it is all that far-fetched given the history of people not giving a flying fuck about anybody not exactly like them selves, but it doesn’t make it true.
“Bill Nye fights for science, Gaming Misogyny, and Comic Book Parents”
I totally got the wrong idea from this title…
Damn you Oxford comma!
Some people will believe what ever allows them the most indignation. In 1932, the only treatments available for syphilis were arsenic compounds of dubious worth. So toxic that 85% or patients were unable to complete the treatment course.
The Tuskegee patients were asymptomatic and in the ‘secondary’ stage of syphilis, which is not contagious. That does not excuse the dishonest management of the ‘experiment’ which was nothing more than delaying treatment in order to gather crude observational data.
The whole project was recklessly indifferent to the duty of care, and inexcusable to extend after effective antibiotic treatment became available.
Question: did anyone even consider leaving a control group in any early applications of antibiotics to venereal infections?
That could only be argued (and I would say even dubiously at that) until the mid forties or so when it became standard treatment to administer penicillin which was in wide use by then. Refusing to acknowledge that the subjects had syphilis much less giving them the cure was beyond unethical at that point, yet the “experiment” continued until it was exposed by a whistle-blower in 1972.
The use of these men was seen as an acceptable lose of medical materials not as people. It’s disgusting and there is zero excuse for it, please don’t.