The Miami Herald, Inc.; Monday, May 5, 1997
Herald Staff
African Americans now account for a higher proportion of newly diagnosed AIDS cases across the country than whites -- 41 percent to 38 percent, with Hispanics making up 19 percent. But at the same time, many blacks with HIV purposely are shunning new treatments that are ameliorating the effects of the disease.
A troubling -- but in some ways understandable -- study tells why. It found that deep distrust of the mainstream medical establishment has kept black patients from taking advantage of recently developed medications. These drugs are giving many others infected with the AIDS virus the greatest hope yet of a healthier quality of life.
This distrust is in no way universal among black Americans. Further, it is incumbent upon those who do not harbor such suspicions, as well as the medical community, to make sensitive and sustained efforts to persuade more black patients to seek help, to seek it earlier, and to take advantage of new, life- renewing drugs.
African Americans, though, -- like women -- have been on the fringes of medical research, often not included in the types of clinical trials that actually could make strides. Of course, the one large-scale experiment in which blacks were included -- the Tuskeegee Institute's syphilis study -- has been reviled at last for its surreptitious, hurtful nature. Beginning in 1932, 399 poor, black men with syphilis -- never told that they had the disease -- were allowed to go untreated in the name of medical research. Many went blind, others insane. The experiment, a national outrage and shame, wasn't halted until 1972.
This has only fueled many blacks' anger and rebuff of mainstream medicine. But with its horrors acknowledged -- President Clinton plans to offer a national apology to the surviving victims -- African Americans with HIV and AIDS must inform themselves fully of the benefits, and drawbacks, of new treatment. With their very lives at stake -- and with open, honest information from the medical community -- they can make decisions based on medical fact, not on fear and loathing.
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