Editorial Suggests Black Parents Learn More About Advances in Medical Research
"Black parents owe it to their children ... to become more sophisticated about how American medical policy evolved over the decades," a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial states. A recent study by Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health found that 67% of black parents, compared with 50% of white parents, mistrust medical research, and that 40% of black parents, compared with 28% of white parents, "suspect doctors of experimenting on their children with risky medicines," according to the Post-Gazette.
"These are devastating numbers on attitudes that may account for some of the disparity in health care between whites and African-Americans," the editorial states, adding, "Lack of education is behind much of the suspicion, but even those with college educations aren't immune to thinking the worst of the medical establishment." In addition, the 1932 and 1972 Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which antibiotics were withheld from black male participants who had syphilis, "should not be used by African-Americans to justify suspicions of medicine in the 21st century," the editorial states.
The editorial concludes, "As doctors of all races strive to take the Hippocratic Oath seriously, it is the height of irresponsibility -- and superstition -- for black patients to act as if a medical conspiracy is anywhere other than in the past" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2/6).