Source Harriet A. Washington, Emerge Magazine Oct. 1994
The Dark Alliance article on the world wide web broke “all the rules” and many of publishing records. It stirred controversy in the enrage Black community, who were concerned with the possibility that the Central Intelligence Agency’s sponsoring drugs for weapons policy in the late seventies and early eighties.
Charges of bad reporting were hurled at Mercury News, the Website that started it all with the publication of its series on Aug. 18, 1996, entitled The Dark Alliance. In that article, Gary Webb asserted that America’s crack plague had its roots in the Central Intelligence Agencies efforts to finance the Nicaragua war with the sales of the then new drug to the Black community, there by killing two perceived enigmas with one drug-Crack.
Convicted Black Drug dealer Rick Donnell Ross and his supplier with military and political connect Danilo Blandon initiated the marketing of this dangerous drug that was a crystallized form of cocaine and produced a quicker, cheaper high. The fall out of this dangerous and clandestine venture produce record profits, arrest, racist legislation that targeted black distributors of this drug for longer prison sentences, although more whites use and sell drugs, more black went to prison and pieces because of its marketing.
The fall out was inconclusive. When the camera stopped, the investigations stopped and charges of having a lack of proof of these allegations where hinder by a lack of cooperation by the CIA and other government agency to produce records to substantiate or disprove the accounts of witnesses and the body of written evidence. These allegations remain unclear in a shroud of inactivity and represent a major failure to follow up on promised investigations.
The people and their representative it would seem have no power to compel its government to “come clean.”
But how for fetch was this idea of “germ warfare? What was real proof there other than eye witness testimony, questionable records, and conflicting stories? Perhaps a look at the history of this process will give us some insight into the credibility of such a plan being viable or not.
Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox Blankets
1754-1763
In 1763 General Amherst fought what was then known as the Pontiac Rebellion. Pontiac was an Ottawa chief who had sided with the French in the French and Indian war of the period. Colonel Henry Bouquet wrote to him on July 13, 1763, suggesting the use of blankets to “inoculate” the Indians with smallpox. In Historian Francis Parkman book The conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War published by Little Brown in 1886 a reference is made in a postscript from Lord Amherst:
Could not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them. [Vol. 11, p. 39(6th edition)]
No one knows whether the plan was carried out, but Parkman stated:
…in the following spring, Gershom Hicks, who had been among the Indians, reported at Fort Pitt that the small-pox had been raging for some time among them…
For more information contact Peter d’Errico: derrico@legal.umass.edu
The Opium War
The Unequal Treaties 1839-1842
The use of opium began in the middle east some 6,000 years ago when Greeks and Roman physicians prescribed it for medical use. Arabian traders took it to China and India about 600 A.D. The Chinese government outlawed its use in 1729. But opium’s addictive powers increased trade to the point that the British fought a war in 1839 till 1842 to continue selling it to the Chinese population for profit. The Chinese seized millions of dollars of the illegal drug from British traders in Canton, and the British responded by defeating them and forcing the sale of the drug upon its public. Denials were made at the time by T. B. Macaulay, then the Secretary of State of e War. In April 1840, he stated that ‘the lives and liberties of Englishmen are at stake; and it is fit that all nations…should know that, where ever the Englishman may wander, he is followed by the eye and guarded by the power of England. The sensor for the Imperial Government Yuan Yu-lin wrote that Opium was a ‘moral poison’ that unless it were contained ‘it would mean the end of the life of the people and the destruction of the soul.’ China was dominated by European powers for more than a century after opium’s first introduction.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
1932-till present
The U.S. government conducted a study of the effects of untreated cases of Syphilis on some 400 impoverished Africa-American males. They were not told that they had contracted the disease, nor were they informed that they were a part of a study. Only 127 men survived the study. The video, Susceptible to Kindness: Miss Evers’ Boys and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study addresses the real life drama boys ethics of such a study. Cornell professor and physician David Feldshud examines the cases through Eunice Rivers, an African-American “public health” nurse who helped conduct the study.
What is striking about this case is that one of the “physicians” name John Cutler 1942-67 remained remorseless and stated “if a few people had to suffer, it’s unfortunate. They were doing it for the rest of their race.” Perhaps he should have volunteered for the study. One class mate was undecided about whether a doctor in the Tuskegee study was wrong to withhold treatment from a patient in the name of medical research-even when a cure for the patient’s condition is available. “You’re learning ethics not to make that decision,” snapped Monhian, who believed that patient’s health should not be at the mercy of some medical study. Perhaps that student should volunteer as well for such a study.
The Department of Energy
Hazel R. O’Leary, the first African American to serve as the Secretary of Energy discovered a 50 year secret about how her department conducted experiments on humans without their knowledge are consent. Albuquerque Tribune first reported it in 1993. The Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services and NASA are involved as well. Under the Atomic Energy Commission, more than 800 people were subjected to tests such as injected with radioactive plutonium. Mr. Elmer Allen lost his knee in the experiment done to discover its effects on the human body.
Medical College of Virginia used experimental subjects and patients at Dooley, a charity hospital of Black children, and St. Philips, its sister hospital for Black adults. 44 whites and 22 black were involved. Medical College of Virginia tested 460 Black and 770 White patients with Phosphorus-32 without consent.
Chester M. Southam of the Sloan-Kettering Institute injected at least 396 inmates at Ohio State Prison (half of them Black) with live cancer cells. Its sponsor, the National Institutes of Health, also sponsored the Tuskegee syphilis study. Chester M. Southam was stripped of his license when he injected 22 elderly hospital patients with cancer cells at Brooklyn’s Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital.
In 1963 (till 1971) radioactive thymidine (a genetic compound) was injected into the testicles of more than 100 prisoners at the Oregon State Penitentiary, to see whether the rate of sperm production was affected by exposure to steroidal hormones. Dr. Heller conducted the research. Dr. Austin R. Stough at Kilby, Draper and McAlester prisons conduct flawed blood plasma trials in 1967. Hospital and prisons expelled him several times from when prisoners died.
Dr. George Gey, a White Johns Hopkins University researcher, used without any authority the cells of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer while under his care. Because her unusual cells were able to continue growing after they were taken from her body (normal cells die within weeks) researchers directed many studies to them. Her cells, called Hela cells, helped develop the polio vaccine. Researchers conduct hundreds of medical experiments with these Hela cells. Modern medicine owes much of its existence to Henrietta Lacks. She was never asked, and her family was never compensated by John Hopkins University or any research hospital. It was medical rape.
John Hopkins University with the National Institutes of Health conducted studies on 7,000 young black boys. The blood tests were done to confirm a theory that people with extra Y chromosome are more likely to become criminals later in life. It has yet been proven.
These are just some of the reason, so many in the Black community find it easy to believe the latest stories.
Source Harriet A. Washington, Emerge Magazine Oct. 1994