James Jones\' Bad Blood Is Certainly One

¶ … James Jones' Bad Blood is certainly one of the most popular books to emerge from 1990s decade. The book can have a profoundly disconcerting impact on the readers but is definitely worth reading because of the well-researched contents. This book exposes the unethical behavior of government and medical community, which resulted in the death of hundreds of black men during a torturous government-sponsored Tuskegee Syphilis project which lasted 40 years and caused immense harm to poor illiterate African-American families.

The project that began in 1930s continued for 40 long years in which 400 black men with syphilis were studied by medical professionals who wanted to see how the diseases progressed in black men even though the..."germ that causes syphilis, the stages of the disease's development, and the complications that can result from untreated syphilis were all known to medical science."

The sheer brutality of the study was revealed when it was found that the experiment had absolutely no positive objectives. It was conducted just to see how syphilis affected black population and what were its effects on the subjects. The subjects or should we say victims of this project were not given any kind of treatment for syphilis during the time they were studied and the project came to an end with the autopsy of the last victim. Even though penicillin had been discovered in 1940s, the patients who could have benefited from it were not given any such medication because that was not the purpose of the study. Moreover, the experiment did not yield any positive results for discovery of new syphilis medicine neither did it help in discovering possible alternative treatment for infected patients. All in all, it was simply a cruel case of whites victimizing the blacks and even placed some African- American people in key positions to make the whole study look impartial and unbiased. Dr. Cummings, the then Surgeon General, nonchalantly remarked, "It is our desire to continue observation on the cases selected for the recent study and if possible to bring a percentage of these cases to autopsy so that pathological confirmation may be made of the disease processes."

Racial bigotry is the most important theme of the book because all of the victims chosen for the study were African-Americans who belonged to the poorest section of Alabama. The author writes, "Macon County has been economically depressed throughout the twentieth century," and knowing that people in this area would be unfamiliar with their rights as research subjects and concept of informed consent, government decided to lure them into this project. This speaks of extreme racial prejudice that prevails in the society, and plagues our government and medical community. Dr. H.L. Harris, Jr., an African-American physician, visited Macon County to see how racial and social prejudice played important roles in this projected. He found that in Macon County, "The people were entirely ignorant of the character of the disease for which they were being treated, the reports submitted stating that one's blood was bad, in which case he should report to treatments at the designated center, or that the test showed that one's blood was all right, in which case no treatment was necessary." Apart from racial discrimination, the other important theme that we come across is the responsibility of medical community and how the lack of the same can ruin the lives of many precious human beings. Jones presents a detailed account of medical professionals involved in this study to find out why would medical community participate in such horrendous acts. With thorough research and after several interviews, Jones came to the conclusion that most of those who initiated or conducted this study felt they were simply following orders, doing their job or did so "for the glory of science." It is quite disturbing to learn that these medical professionals chose the victims assuming that their "weak constitution and inherent susceptibility to disease," made them ideal candidates for the study. While we all believe that medical profession is based on ethics and impartiality, this doesn't seem to be the case in this specific experiment in which 400 human beings were treated as animals. The third important theme is harmful effects of this study on race relations, status of African-Americans and failure of most governmental programs for black community's well being. The author maintains that since this study and its horrible objectives became public, black community has viewed every government move with suspicion. Majority of African-American people feels that even AIDS is some kind of government-sponsored disease meant to wipe out the black race. "Bizarre as it may seem to most people, many black American believe that AIDS and the health measures used against it are part of a conspiracy to wipe out the black race." found the book highly interesting even though most passages left me completely dumbfounded with horror and utter disbelief. Are governments and medical community really capable of something so cruel and horribly despicable? There is no reason to doubt the findings because since it came out in the open, government has publicly apologized to the victims, which confirms the ulterior nature of "the longest non-therapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history." The paranoia this study generated has negatively affected race relations in the country and has tarnished the image of American government and the medical professionals. The author has presented evidence in support of his findings where necessary to lend more credibility to his research and thus this book makes for a highly informative reading.