Columnist James Ingram
I’m sure you’ve heard of the infamous Tuskegee Experiment, in which (between 1932-1972) the U.S. government intentionally denied treatment to 399 syphilis-infected black men in Alabama. That study led to the subsequent deaths of 128 of the men, while 59 women and children contracted or were born with syphilis.
The Cincinnati Radiation Experiment (between 1960 and 1971) was another abomination, in which Dr. Eugene Saenger gave cancer patients full-body radiation treatments instead of simply treating their cancer. Two-thirds of the victims were poor African Americans.
Couldn’t happen today, you say? Don’t be so sure about that.
Last week, Associated Press writer John Heilprin revealed that the good, old U.S. government funded a HUD study, beginning in 2000, in which poor black children were used as guinea pigs in an East St. Louis neighborhood which included the A.M. Jackson Elementary School and the Salvation Army Community Center.
This modern-day Tuskegee-like experiment consisted of “mad scientists” spreading sludge (fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes) on soil to allegedly protect children from lead poisoning.
EPA-funded propaganda from the Community Environmental Resource Program promised ESL residents that the East Boogie experiment was safe.
However, Murray McBride, a soil chemist and director of Cornell Waste Management Institute, challenged the choice of neighborhood for the study as well as the truth of the claims that the sludge was safe. A similar study was also conducted in a poor, black community in Baltimore. It turns out that both communities were (surprise) told an elaborate lie.
The AP went further in stating that “epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe,” according to Dr. Thomas Burke, professor at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The East St. Louis Bio-solid Lead Remediation Project (the formal name for this travesty) should come as no surprise to anyone. Black communities, historically, have always been dumping grounds for toxic waste and contaminated air pollutants.
I would be surprised, however, if the experiment took place in affluent West St. Louis County or suburban Shiloh, IL. But we all know that affluent communities would never have allowed such experimentation on their residents.
East Boogie residents have become so accustomed to polluters, such as the chemical plants in neighboring Sauget, contaminating their air with a toxic mix of chemicals and stench, over the decades, that this potentially deadly “remediation project” likely failed to receive proper scrutiny (as usual) from ESL officials.
Therefore, I would hope that ESL Mayor Alvin Parks, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello (and other elected officials) would exercise due diligence in working with California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who plans to investigate the government’s funding of the study.
Reparations, up to and including financial compensation to ESL victims of the so-called “project,” should be pursued vigorously – if the findings reveal culpability on the part of the government.
After all, that’s the very least that “our government” could do.
Email: jtingram_1960@yahoo.com.