The coronavirus pandemic has suddenly taken the world by storm and has temporarily changed every American’s way of life. A vaccine (and testing) is needed for us to get back to our normal way of life, although that could be a year away. But, when the vaccine finally arrives, will everyone be eager to take it?
What we have quickly learned is this virus does not discriminate in who falls victim to it, young, old, male, female, but in recent weeks African Americans have emerged as the group most likely to not survive once stricken with this disease according to a Reuters report. It is believed because African Americans have many underlying medical conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and asthma that has contributed to the extremely high death rates from this disease.
“That makes the virus particularly dangerous for African Americans, who because of environmental and economic factors have higher rates of those illnesses,” said Dr. Summer Johnson McGee, dean of the School of Health Sciences at the University of New Haven in the report. Dr. McGee is not surprised that African Americans are faring far worse during the coronavirus crisis because of the racism that has caused a lack of investment and poor healthcare in black communities.
This unfortunate revelation has brought to light something that many blacks have known for year, there is a huge health disparity gap in many African American communities throughout this country, especially in our urban areas. Access to healthcare and affordability have left many African Americans without regular doctor’s care.
But even when healthcare, and a vaccine, is available, many African Americans have a distrust of the medical system. This trepidation stems from years of some in the medical community taking advantage of poor vulnerable black people by doing involuntary experiments like what was done in the Tuskegee Study where 600 black men from Alabama were studied for 40 years starting in 1932 for untreated syphilis that was injected into them without their knowledge by the United States Public Health Service as stated in a paper from McGill University. This incident has come to be known as the “Tuskegee Effect.” The experiments ended when uncovered in a 1972 exposé by The Associated Press.
There was also the case of involuntary sterilizations done on many African Americans in the south in an attempt to control the African Americans population. According to PBS’ Independent Lens post in 2016, unnecessary hysterectomies were done on African-American women under the auspices appendectomies at a teaching hospital in North Carolina for training of their medical students.
Another incident of unethical, unauthorized medical procedures is the case of Henrietta Lack whose unique cells were harvested from her unknowingly when she was admitted into Johns Hopkins Hospital for cancer treatment in 1951. Those cells were so highly valued that scientist still use them in medical research today. They are the immortal HeLa cells.
In an article in Biography, it tells how the 31-year-old mother of five young children entered the hospital in January of 1951 complaining of abdominal pain and unusual bleeding. By that October, Mrs. Lack died of cervical cancer. Doctors had previously tried to harvest cells from other patients for future experiments, but none lasted long. Mrs. Lack’s tumor cells were the first to ever remain viable indefinitely. Her cells have led to revolutionary research such as the polio vaccine. Once it was revealed that the HeLa cells were used in discovering the polio vaccine, the scientific community took notice and the cells were cloned. More that ten thousand patents have been registered since the 1950s using these cells.
These are just a small fraction of incidences where African Americans were used as human guinea pigs without their knowledge or compensation. Therefore, once the COVID-19 vaccine finally arrives, there may be some black people who may be somewhat hesitant about taking it because of this country’s history in experimentation on unsuspecting African Americans.
But getting people to take any vaccine comes down to risk and benefits according to Dr. Garth Graham, vice president of community health and impact at CVS Health in a USA Today article. He believes the resistance to the vaccine is unwarranted citing data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that shows the flu vaccines prevents millions of illnesses and flu-related doctors visits and complications each year. Dr. Graham cites another major study that shows how the flu vaccine can significantly reduce the risk of children dying from the flu.
So, when it comes to taking the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine, people will have to think about the effects this virus can have on those that contract it and weigh the risks versus the benefits for themselves.
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