Genelyn Garma
Professor Van Eijk
Anthropology 474
25 October 2014
The Spectrum of Race
Medical knowledge has become a powerful tool to exploit differences within individuals in our society. The differences among individuals on the basis of social characteristics and qualities, known as social differences, are perceived through research and studies in a negative manner. Gender, race, socioeconomic status, and income are one many examples of social differences that exist. Through articles that we have read in the past, it could be arguably be seen that the question of race and gender alone are motivation for medical professions to conduct research to distinguish and/or create a type of person out of the spectrum that society have created.
Human …show more content…
Group of vulnerable blacks, including children, soldiers, and prisoners, have been consistently targeted (Washington, 385). The Tuskegee Syphilis implicated efforts to find distinct types of people by only using African-American as their subjects in the study due to the belief that blacks manifested the venereal disease differently compared to the whites (157). There is no denying that racism was a driving force for this research, even Public Health Services (PHS) stepped in to help to make this belief true as they were confident that “blacks are a notoriously syphilis-soaked race” despite the fact that 61% of true syphilis cases in the Macon County were contracted congenitally and non-venereal (160). PHS and those involved in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study already had a negative presumption about the African-American race, they expected results that validate their beliefs in racial dimorphism regarding syphilis, therefore, they completely supported for the inhumane research to
Professor Van Eijk
Anthropology 474
25 October 2014
The Spectrum of Race
Medical knowledge has become a powerful tool to exploit differences within individuals in our society. The differences among individuals on the basis of social characteristics and qualities, known as social differences, are perceived through research and studies in a negative manner. Gender, race, socioeconomic status, and income are one many examples of social differences that exist. Through articles that we have read in the past, it could be arguably be seen that the question of race and gender alone are motivation for medical professions to conduct research to distinguish and/or create a type of person out of the spectrum that society have created.
Human …show more content…
Group of vulnerable blacks, including children, soldiers, and prisoners, have been consistently targeted (Washington, 385). The Tuskegee Syphilis implicated efforts to find distinct types of people by only using African-American as their subjects in the study due to the belief that blacks manifested the venereal disease differently compared to the whites (157). There is no denying that racism was a driving force for this research, even Public Health Services (PHS) stepped in to help to make this belief true as they were confident that “blacks are a notoriously syphilis-soaked race” despite the fact that 61% of true syphilis cases in the Macon County were contracted congenitally and non-venereal (160). PHS and those involved in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study already had a negative presumption about the African-American race, they expected results that validate their beliefs in racial dimorphism regarding syphilis, therefore, they completely supported for the inhumane research to