Francis L. Holland blogs about a recent article he read from the Associated Press:
Although whites would have us believe that AIDS could NOT have been started by whites and that the Tuskegee Experiment could never happen again,
BALTIMORE – Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.
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It galls me. It galls me that the major news institutions can make federal cases out of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s prophetic indignation at a nation whose policies undervalue and marginalize whole populaces, and reduce it to the rantings of a mad man, when in our own backyard our own government is conducting more experimentation on its citizens!
[Hat Tip: the field negro]
Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.
Perhaps they were never told about any harmful ingredients in the fertilizer because there were no harmful ingredients in the fertilizer. The links and articles never once offer any evidence or even allegations that there was. Given that the fertilizer that they were using is also sold commercially, it may well be that this is the case. It also means that an analysis of the fertilizer used should be available. So before people start screaming about how this whole thing put black people at risk, maybe someone should determine what risk actually existed.
It is a bit problematical as to why only black neighborhoods were chosen. But then, if you’re trying to do a study on reducing the bioavailability of heavy metals in soil in a residential area, you need to go where such soil is. That’s going to be in an industrial neighborhood where the industry failed and left and that was turned into a residential neighborhood. That’s going to be a poor neighborhood, which in turn is going to greatly tend to be in a black neighborhood. Again, before people start alleging racism here it would be well to determine the actual facts. Where in this city are there polluted soils? Who lives there?
Consider that in fact what we may have here is an attempt to make up for racism by giving preferential access to reduction of exposure to heavy metal poisoning to blacks over whites. I can see the headline now if they’d picked a white neighborhood – “Lead poisoning reduction given only to white neighborhoods.”