Ethics – Students Against Pseudoscience

Science and extreme agendas

Author: Raf Kliber (Social Media Officer)

Original feature image art specially drawn by: TallCreepyGuy

While I work myself to boredom at a local retail store, I listen to some podcasts in the background. Something to cheer me up. Among my favourites are the Nature Podcast and Climate Denier’s Playbook. But, on that specific Wednesday, the episode was anything but cheering. I landed on the Nature Podcast’s “Trump team removes senior NIH chiefs in shock move” episode, which provided me with a bleak look into the current US administration’s proceedings. The bit that shocked me the most was how much the move clung to Project 2025‘s agenda. One of the moves discussed was a defunding of ‘gender ideology’ driven research (read anything that includes the word trans, even though such research is useful for everyone). Furthermore, instead of such ‘unimportant’ research, the administration wanted to conduct studies into ‘child mutilation’ (read trans conversation therapy) at hospitals. Eight hours later, while soaking in a mandatory afterwork bath, I began pondering “what is the interplay between extreme agendas and the ‘fall’ of science?” and “what I, a STEM person, could do about it?”. As a Polish person, my first bubbles of ideas started with fascism and the Third Reich.

Jews, fascism, and ‘directed’ science

I moved to the UK when I was twelve years old. This event spared me the traditional trip to Auschwitz one takes when in high school. It spared me from the walls scratched by the nails of the people trapped in gas chambers. It spared me from the place so horrible yet so pristinely preserved that visiting it is as close to time travel as one can get. About a fifth of the population of Poland was wiped out in World War II. On average, every family lost someone. Not on average, many families were completely gone. Due to the gravity of the topic at hand I reached out to Dr. Martin A. Ruehl, lecturer in German Intellectual History at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at University of Cambridge for some guidance. He also gave a talk on “What is fascism?” during the Cambridge festival, which I recommend. Another reason is that I am by education, a physicist, and just as physicists have their own set or rigorous habits that make their field solid, historians and philosophers have theirs.

Fascism as an idea is fuzzy, or at least with fuzzy borders. One knows definitely that after Hitler took over the power in Germany, it took on Fascist ideology. It is also abundantly clear that the current UK is not a fascist regime. Trying to nail the border delineating the least fascistic and just about not fascistic regime is futile, complicated further by each regime having their own unique element. The process of how it festers and develops in a country is left for others to explain, and I encourage the reader to watch this video essay by Tom Nicholas on how to spot a (potential) fascist. I will go with the conclusion of Dr Ruehl’s talk. Fascism is a racist, nationalistic, extreme and violent idea that often puts the core group in a self-imposed theoretical attack from the outgroup. (e.g. Jews were an imagined threat to the German state, even though they weren’t). I procrastinate talking about subject matter to highlight two important points: Fascism is a complex topic that could be studied for lifetimes and consequently, I am not an expert. I have made my best attempt at giving it the due diligence it deserves.

Disclaimers aside, what was the state of science during Hitler’s reign? Let us set the scene. The role I’d like us to play is that of a scientist at the time. Let us imagine ourselves in 1933 Germany, right at the beginning of the Nazi reign. Nazi party made it rather clear: Either you, as the scientist, are ready to conduct research that aligns with the party’s agenda, or you’re out of academia. Unless you’re Jewish and known to be on the left of the political spectrum (historical pre-nazi left, although it would still include things like early transgender care, for example, as advocated by Magnus Hirschfeld), then you don’t get a choice. Physics Today has a nice article that contains the migration of selected physicists out of Nazi Germany, which I recommend having a look at. Similar goes for other branches of science. The crux of the situation is that if you are studying races or ballistics, you are more than welcome to stay. Hitler did recognise that only the most modern military equipment would allow for the Third Reich to wage war on everyone. Similarly, he did want to put his ideals onto the firm foundation of “cold and logical” science, even though at times that compromised the scientific process. For example, the creation of Deutsche Physik (which denied relativity) and the burning of books by the above-mentioned Magnus Hirschfeld. (As much as my past self would thoroughly disagree, trans people are a cold and logical conclusion of how messy biology can be. More so than arbitrarily dividing all of population into two buckets.)

The adoption of the idea of Social Darwinism (that fittest social groups survive) and the knowledge of what genes do (albeit well before the discovery of DNA structure and the ability to compare genomes) created the foundation of ignorance for ‘scientific racism’ and eugenics. That being said, there was more to it than the current state of not-knowing. According to the introduction of “Nazi Germany and the Humanities” edited by Wolfgang Bialas and Anson Rabinbach, “Creation of the hated Weimar Republic created a deep sense of malaise and resentment among the mandarins, who, for all their differences, had in common the belief that a “profound ‘crisis of culture’ was at hand””. To draw a conclusion, the loss of the war and a tense national atmosphere led to the development of such völkisch ideals way before Hitler’s regime touched the ground. To further quote, “many retained the illusion of intellectual independence”. The general sense of superiority also gave rise to books like Deutsche Physik, a work that opposed Albert Einstein’s work directly.

(Note from the author: Googling “Social Darwinism” will lead you to creationist videos by Discovery Science (A YouTube channel by Discovery Institute, a fundamental creationist think tank). They seem to be hooked on using the aforementioned atrocities to try to link Darwin, and his early understanding of evolution, to Satan and hence to him leading us away from God with his theory. It is worth mentioning that although it bears his name, Darwin did not play a role in coining or using the term.)

To summarise this section: The way the corrupt ideals spread into science and politics in Nazi Germany arose from discontent and false hope. It was more of a fork situation. Both the world of academia and politics took up the story of national threat and superiority due to high levels of discontent originating from the Weimar era, and while intertwined together, I think that the cross-influence only amplified the process. This resulted in academia and politics taking up both ideals independently, and simply supported each other in the downward spiral such as antisemitism.

USSR, Russia, and limiting scientific cooperation.

A nice cup of tea on the following day led to some more thinking about other regimes. Like a true ‘Brit’, I took out my teapot and with a cup of Earl Gray in a fancy Whittard porcelain in my hand, I drifted off again into another rabbit hole. This time instead of west, I dug the tunnel east.
An interesting tidbit from my past regards my primary school. The changing rooms in that place had an interesting design. If one were to pay enough attention, they would see a system of grooves in the floors that were meant to act as drainage. Why drain something from an indoor location? The changing room was meant to serve as an emergency field hospital in case of another war. The school turns out to be old enough to see some of the old soviet practices in its design. For those unaware, Poland was part of the Soviet bloc up until 1991. Just 12 years before my birth, and 13 before Poland joined the EU. So let us journey to the east and see what history has to teach us.

Stalin was a dictator, just like his Austrian-German counterpart. What is slightly different is the ideology that shaped the persecution of scientists at the time – a different flavour of extremism. I could go on a rant about what Stalinist flavour of Marxism is, but just like Fascism, there are scholars who spend their lives studying it. I am not one of them.

Nevertheless, the parallels between the corruption of sciences in Fascist Germany and Stalinist USSR are rather staggering for such different ideologies. In Germany, anything considered Jewish or going against the greatness of the Aryan race was immediately cut out, while the rest was bent towards the leading political party’s view. Here it was much the same. The humanist subjects took the largest hit in independence, as those in Germany. Lysenkoism played a role in slowing down the genetics research in the USSR. Instead, what followed was an increase in Lamarckism (acquired characteristics are passed on, rather than typical natural selection). This then, possibly, contributed to agricultural decline, creating another subject of memes for the edgy GenZ.

This also led further to isolation of the scientists. While every now and then they would invite foreign scientists (as Feynman wrote in his letters, and let us be honest, this might have been because of his involvement in Los Alamos) the mingling of Russian scientists with the rest of the world was minimal. Did I forget to mention that geneticists were often executed for not agreeing with Lysenkoism? Science is a global endeavour for a reason. It needs way more manpower than any country alone has. A country can never be a fully independent branch, it will simply lead to a slow withering of progress.

To have a nice circular structure in this section and bring it back to my home: Attitudes can also persist after occupation. The Polish government made some unpopular moves in academia during the time of the PIS party. Polish academia uses a scoring system, where each publication in a journal grants you points. Each point tries to quantify your contribution to a field. So technically a biochemistry paper would give you points in both biology and chemistry. They started awarding more points for papers in Polish journals rather than international ones, alongside some mixing of awarding points in political sciences for publishing theology papers. This may be seen as a slight resurrection of the national pride in sciences which I despise so much (Springer Nature’s journals are always going to be my favourite to skim through).

So what?

My Eurocentric summary of history is probably boring you to death. Let us talk about the US. Trump! The name that makes my hair stand on the back of my neck. The similarity of what is currently happening in the USA really makes me think that history does indeed repeat itself.

Firstly, just like Lysenko and his anti-genetics, Trump decided to elect RFK Jr as the minister of HHS. A well known opponent of vaccines is in a position of hiring and firing researchers. The MAHA (make America healthy again) report included a lot of less-than-optimal healthcare research directions. RFK really believes in a mix of the terrain theory (that the terrain of your body i.e. fitness and nutrition, play THE most important part of your immune system) and miasma theory (covered in a previous article here, but basically a medieval theory on bad air making you sick). There are a whole host of reasons for a person to also point out that a recovering drug addict and brain tapeworm survivor does not make for a great leader for a health agency. To be a devil’s advocate though, he did come up as an environmental lawyer. Additionally, RFK supports removal of fluoride from water and has helped to spread misinformation about vaccines in Africa. He has a very tangible body count and actively harms populations.

Secondly, there are the topics from the headlines in the first section. It is clear that the current administration’s aims are not simply doing science to explore x, but rather confirming x under the guise of science. This is why 75% of scientists that answered Nature’s poll said that they are looking to move out of the USA. Additionally, in a piece by the New York Times, experts in Fascism are also moving away from USA. It is something that is now consequently causing the ‘brain drain’ in the USA and, ironically for an administration that is anti-China, hands over the scientific majority to China. (Whether you think that is good or bad, is up to you. I personally am neutral.) Additionally, the administration has already tried to block Harvard’s ability to admit international students which contribute heavily towards their income stream – all in retaliation for Harvard allowing students to express their right to free speech and protest in favour of Palestine. This is slightly more sneaky than executions and imprisonments. Nevertheless, in a capitalist society, it might be somewhat equivalent when the funding we all depend on goes dry.

Lastly, there is a difference I would like to point out. Regimes like the one above often arose from a dire need for a radical leader and major changes. The current administration is exercising what I would like to call stealth authoritarianism (as coined by Spectacles here). Gone are the days of having posters with long-nosed depictions of minorities that eat children on every street (although the ‘they eat the dogs’ moment was close enough for many). The current US president is using rather specialised and closed off social media to reserve their opinions to their most dedicated followers rather than the general public. We live in the age where the algorithm separates us. It is becoming ever less likely to encounter an opinion we disagree with out in the wild without searching for it. Executions are no longer needed to silence the critics, for as long as you have a devoted fanbase, the infectiousness of the internet can create a potent and numerous enough group to win the election.

The fact that someone can be so overtly against reality, so blatantly corrupt, yet at the same time can feed a mirage to the right people to get elected is the true curse of the modern information landscape. For me personally, it is the main reason why CUSAP and similar societies are more important now than ever before.

What can you do

Every good opinion piece should end with a call to action. I also don’t want this entire blog post to be a long way of saying “AAAA WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!”, because we most likely won’t.

If you are in the USA and courageous enough, protest. It should be easy enough to find one nearby. This is not the main recommendation. Police brutality has already made itself visible in the past month.
What you can do more safely is support local lobbying. Be prepared that democracy is not as accessible as it seems. Genetically modified skeptic has posted their experiences trying to vote down the requirement for schools in Texas to have the 10 Commandments in classrooms. It was not a pleasant experience, but organisation and support for lobbying individuals can go a long way. Even if it means bringing them food and supplies or sitting in to notify them when it is their turn to speak at meetings.
Vaccinate your family against misinformation. The emotions can run high when politics are involved, but perhaps you can connect one bit of their viewpoint to that kernel of truth that may help. My personal jab at right-wing oil enthusiasts is to connect it with their dislike of migration, as this is a likely result of climate change. (Yes, I don’t believe migration is bad, but they do. Sometimes, you have to engage one topic at a time.)
Join a group to lobby and promote critical thinking. Here at CUSAP we try to go beyond Cambridge; thus we welcome articles written by non-members. You can get in touch with us at the https://cusap.org/action/. Youth against misinformation is another one. Plenty more can be found online.
Most importantly, do not shut up. Speak up when you see fake news. Don’t get distracted by trivial problems. Call your local political governors, meet with them, email them. This goes regardless of which party they are associated with. Make sure that they know that the truth is what you support. (It goes without saying, as long as you feel safe to do so)
Lastly, for my own sanity: do not be nihilistic about how little significance one action or vote has. One vote can make a lot of difference when it is surrounded by a couple thousand more singular votes.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: How “science” betrayed us & haunt back 50 years later.

Author: Maya Lopez (Blog Chief Editor)

The year is 1966. A 29-year-old American epidemiologist, Peter Buxtun filed an official protest with the Service’s Division of Venereal Diseases. He overheard a conversation with his colleague about a man whose family traveled a long distance to see a doctor, away from their hometown. The man was diagnosed with tertiary syphilis – a later stage of infection that damages the central nervous system – and was given a shot of penicillin. However, when the Public Health Service heard of this treatment, they were enraged as the unknowing doctor treated a “research subject” – from the Tuskegee Study -.

The epidemiologist found this rather… strange – why would you NOT treat a clearly ill individual at his later stage of symptoms when you have an effective treatment? After reviewing nearly 10 roundup reports, he realized the horrors of the supposed “research”.

“I didn’t want to believe it. This was the Public Health Service. We didn’t do things like that.” ¹

He knew that something had to be done. He consulted the literature on German war crime proceedings and the Nuremberg code and wrote a report comparing the CDC work to that of Nazis. This didn’t fly well with his bosses – seen as merely a complaint from an “errant employee” and shortly dismissed on the basis that the “volunteers” had full freedom to leave whenever they wished and this “serious work” was not complete. But isn’t the problem the fact that such a study is taking place? November 1968, a few months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Buxtun filed another protest. This is no longer just an ethical critique within epidemiology. This harbored political volatility. For the first time, officials realized how this case may have severe political repercussions, but once again, the claim was rejected.

So in 1972, Buxtun took a step beyond internal protest and became the whistleblower, bringing the story to Jean Heller of the Associated Press. The expose of the study was first out in the Washington Star and by the following day, it made its way to the front cover of the New York Times. And this was how one of the most notorious, modern medical research finally came to an end – after 40 years of deception and harming of unknowing participants. Incidentally, this can be seen in light of the “self-rectifying” capabilities of science – the nightmarish research conducted in the name of science was rejected and ultimately taken down by a scientist. And yet, in 50 years, this very pseudoscience that was rejected was resurrected, only to fuel more pseudoscience….

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

So what exactly took place in Nazi-like research atrocity that was conducted in the name of medical science? Tuskeegee is a city with a university in Macon County, Alabama, USA. The study started in 1932 and consisted of 399 Black men, who already had contracted syphilis and 201 of those who had not contracted it yet. However, these “volunteers” were not told what they were signing up for. In the midst of the Great Depression when medical care was already hard to obtain in this rural region, the Public Health Service and CDC in cooperation with local academic and medical authorities like Tuskegee Institute (now known as Tuskegee University) advertised a social medical roll-out program with following benefits: free physical examinations accompanied with rides to and forth the clinics, hot meals on examination days, and treatment for some minor ailments and injuries. It also had an added guarantee that their family would get recompensation if they agreed to an autopsy of the body after a series of medical studies.

This is particularly compelling in the context of the Great Depression and how male breadwinners have additional incentives to help with family financially. But for those who wondered if this could be too good to be true, there was added encouragement from the already trusted local authorities within the community (like pastors, black doctors, etc), emphasizing that you’d be considered lucky to join such“special medical program” to better their lives and the field of medicine, and convinced the participants that it is worth their time. So the men never agreed to any “syphilis study” at all. People participated and agreed to free body checks and collection of data based on trust; the official authoritative figures in lab coats, doctors, and medical practices.

However, the doctors that they entrusted did not provide effective treatment even once the symptoms started to develop. This was despite scientific evidence of penicillin as an effective syphilis remedy, within the first decade of the study. In fact, participants were often not told if they had syphilis as doctors only commented that they had “bad blood” – which meant various daily malignities not limited to syphilis. But surely, once your untreated syphilis is worsening, you and your family might seek help? Like second opinion or treatment? In some accounts, it is revealed that doctors were told that the participants would lose all “benefits” from the study if they sought after treatment, showing that the study had no intention to cure these men, EVER. By the way, this study, colloquially known as the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study”, comes with a full title: “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”.

From its inception, this study was structured as a funded, onslaught of slow death, to propel the shaky theories and the hypothesis it is based on. It’s arguably funded pseudoscience research that is riddled with death and harming the lives of many to be born. During the course of 40 years, 28 confirmed and possibly 100+ men died as a direct result of untreated syphilis from this study. Furthermore, it led to many more infections as a result of untreated participants, including children born with congenital syphilis.

The Pseudoscience of Tuskegee Study and Our Critical Thinking

Naturally, upon the leak of the Tuskegee Study to the public by the whistleblower Buxtun, there was a massive public outrage leading to the termination of the experiment. However, we need to acknowledge that the field (including those not directly involved), didn’t all just immediately say: “Yup, this is messed up; that was bad of us.” Some scientists and the medical community attempted to “still see value” in this or even outright defend it:

“There was nothing in the experiment that was unethical or unscientific. – Dr. John Heller (assistant in charge of on-site medical operations) ²”

Now, many, many unethical measures are needless to be said – especially with the blatantly obvious premises and clear willingness to MAKE SURE all participants suffer a slow death due to the “autopsy-focused” nature of the study. However, the other half of Heller’s claim of this statement is also completely wrong. This study was EXTREMELY unscientific.

Starting with the premises of the experiment, the conception of the study was fundamentally founded on race science belief that was based on pure racism. It was believed that syphilis would manifest differently depending on your race. African Americans were thought to show more damage to cardiovascular systems than to their central nervous systems, which was where the manifestation of the whites who they believed to have their “superior” brains. Additionally, the experimental design is also flawed and the two study groups were not strictly maintained. For example, individuals starting off as syphilis-negative were kept in that group even if they later contracted and tested positive – ruining the integrity of the control group. Furthermore, we often discuss in science how new research addresses the knowledge gap, ie, it should contribute to some unanswered question or provide novel data to the body of knowledge. However, in this regard, the Tuskegee Experiment also fails to be “scientific”: it really adds nothing to the body of knowledge on syphilis. Syphilis is -and has been even back then – a well-documented disease. There are many historical records of what untreated syphilis looks like across time and place. Multiple waves of infection surged nations across history before the establishment of useful treatments, and these outbreaks seemingly left a culturally ingrained record of how nasty this disease becomes when untreated. In Europe, there are numerous medical paintings well depicting such “untreated” syphilis (Google Image at your own discretion pleae). In Edo-era Japan, a poem talks of the nightjars (then, being a code for illegal prostitutes) “lacking nose”:

“鷹の名にお花お千代はきついこと”

To the Nightjars, ohana-ochiyo (pun with words sounding like falling nose) is indeed harsh³

referring to the notorious terminal symptoms where noses fall off. It is clear that to the eyes of those who conceived this study, this was really a sick “passion project” – a morbid curiosity, entranced by autopsies and examining the different ways that the black bodies succumb to the disease, hoping to find a difference in the manifestation of the disease for the “whites”.

While this is an extreme case of how clear the lack of scientific bases is, this study leaves an important message to all modern scientific thinkers – critical thinking. This may sound obvious but given that science (especially nowadays more than before) is a group endeavor and often institutionalized, being critical at all times requires not just checking your own bias on the research topic, but also when you are told what to do. During the days of Buxtun, disagreeing with the senior was seen as a much more unacceptable practice. However, the whistleblower facing a brutal punishment is a phenomenon far from over. In 2010, a metastudy of 216 corporate fraud is said to have identified over 80% of named employees who reported the fraud faced some sort of punishment including being fired. This kind of reaction unfortunately is not reserved for private institutions. Another account found that amongst the nurses who reported misconduct, all of them had suffered from some level of informal retaliation (including ostracism and pressure to quit), nearly 30% faced more formal reprimands, and 10% were suggested to seek psychiatrists. The message is clear – whistleblowers despite the public image of a heroic spotlight, face the danger of personal and professional stakes to this day, which only exacerbates in a work environment where proper legal protection may be lacking.

Buxtun, while not the only one who protested in the long course of study, took an exceptionally courageous step of not letting this issue die – despite all the rejections of his protests. More broadly, this is a testament to continuous critical thinking that should be required of all scientists to prevent a top-down approach to study. If anything, science should have its roots in not being afraid to point out that something is wrong. The field-defining nature IS the falsificationism. This constant questioning should extend beyond the factual premise that lies as a foundation of your hypothesis under investigation, but also to the motive and the implication of the study. What question will this study answer? What is this for? And At what cost? Naturally, the Tuskegee study paved the way for numerous ethical guidelines that are legally binding including the modern practice of informed consent. While these legal reforms to protect whistleblowers do take place in later decades (Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989) for example, ultimately it cannot truly encourage people to step out of bystander, unless we address the research culture which is an uphill battle for the whistleblowers currently. Hence, researchers must be conscious of and vigilant on these matters across the board.

Beyond the History Textbook: When the Pseudoscience Revives to Haunt Us Today

I could have finished my writing here with a neat lesson-of-the-day, except in recent years, this study has resurfaced but with malignant intent. While this brutal history forever remains accessible to the public, ranging from President Clinton’s Apology to educational content in Black History, my personal impression is that more discussion should’ve been made FROM the science community. Sure, maybe there are “enough” retailing in terms of science history, US history, politics, etc, but this had a catastrophic impact on the trust of populational medical research and servers as a primary example in the field that highlights the importance of informed consent and whistleblowing (though, note that consent was established as a prerequisite far before the end of the Tuskegee Study). So many measures now exist to make such atrocities near-impossible. While this may have been not intentional, the lack of such proactive discussion from the science community of all levels perhaps buried this away as trivia for those “in the know”. Retrospectively, this may be one of the failures of our community – to understand and effectively address the underlying distrust of institutionalized science and authority by individuals from a marginalized community that has such a history of exploitation.

In 2021, when COVID-19 vaccines were under way, a documentary-styled video production called Medical Racism: The New Apartheid, was distributed online via anti-vaccination group Children’s Health Defense, laced with conspiracy theories about newly made vaccines. The central assertion of the video is said to be that: the US wants to harm minorities with vaccines. They supposedly talk about the classical anti-vaccine evidence regarding the “link” between autism and the MMR vaccine, but they allege the COVID-19 vaccination efforts a secret experiments on the African American and Latin communities specifically. And to illustrate their point, they refer to the Tuskegee Study.

Yes, the Tuskegee experiment was real, and as Clinton puts it, it was “deeply, profoundly, morally wrong”. However, what we see here, is an exploitation of a truth to pursue a malicious motive. A racially targeted propaganda ONCE AGAIN, to hurt the minority community that is relatively more vulnerable by proactively dissuading them from accessing health care. To me, this is what makes this particular exploitation OF Tuskegee Study evil: it tarnishes the very thing that we should have taken as a lesson. The study happened because of its context which added up like a perfect storm: the community was already a medical care desert in the midst of an extreme economic crisis, fuelled further by racism on the side of the researcher. It’s only natural that such betrayal by “the science”, by the healthcare providers leads to more distrust and therefore this forms a negative spiral of real scientific healthcare not reaching out to them. Despite this recognition of the danger of losing trust, here we are this very narrative being regurgitated not to promote the accessibility of medical care nor transparency of science and research, but to dissuade people from excluding themselves from science as a whole.

The video piece supposedly further assures their target audience why they will not need the “supposed” immune boost from the vaccine by performing mental gymnastics: claiming that African Americans are “naturally immune from COVID-19” and that vitamin D will protect you from the disease. The irony of the production doesn’t end here but by how they are presenting the subject as well. The message is clear: viewers should not trust the medical authorities (the CDC and big pharma), but you should totally trust our information because look! Kennedy with all his “authoritativeness” is gracing us the serious advice. While it is hard to measure the effect of this propaganda given that the video itself became unavailable shortly after its release on SM platforms, the impact it may have had to contribute toward radicalization and vaccine-hesitancy (which was apparently higher in minority communities) is easily imaginable. In a sense, it is “clever” production that dissuades the trust of mRNA vaccine by actually presenting no evidence that vaccines are unsafe, but it successfully taps into the larger historical trauma – fear-baiting on their memory of deception deeply ingrained in the community.

Unfortunately, there is perhaps no quick fix to trust that is once lost. After all, it is understandable self-defense skepticism in a population that was traumatized in such a manner. However, as the new medical frontiers are being explored and studied, these must be with the intention to deliver – to as many people as possible. If so, the science community must not let the brutality of historical trauma haunt us in the present, to be further exploited to contribute to the inequality of healthcare in the future. Rather, the past needs to be told openly to prevent such exploitation, and show a proactive stance that we have and will continue to evolve – as apology alone is a mere word, that will not earn us back the trust that is lost amongst some. These accounts of history don’t need to be for fear-mongering as well. The acknowledgment of what has happened in the past should also be in conjunction with how we have changed. For example, in the US, the National Research Act – a federal law on ethical guidelines for human medical research passed in 1974, and many institutions have added measures regarding the race and ethnicity of protected groups in studies. Policies and guidelines are often not the sexiest conversation science can offer. But for constructive conversation, these “follow-ups” on the old news highlighting what we have learned, and what we are doing now should be proactively communicated with compassion and acknowledgment of the historical misconducts. Hopefully, such conversation (including the uncomfortable introspection into the darker chapters in history) can lend to the promotion of our consistency, reliability, and our compassion – that we care -, to further the medical frontier to as many people as possible.

We will be hosting a screening event of this anti-vaccine film by Children’s Health Defense on upcoming Saturday (Feb. 22nd) at Queens. Join us there to explore and analyze how such misinformation and pseudoscience was being spread, and further discussion with the CUSAP team! Thank you for reading this rather lengthy journey of history and see you at the event!