“Why Should We Trust You?” Robert Kennedy Jr. Documentary draws back the curtain of medical racism

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

“It seems, then, that when the experiments are sufficiently important, the use of African volunteers is justified.” J.F. Corson, Medical Officer, Tinde Laboratory, Tanganyika 1938

Last week, members of the African-Caribbean came to me concerned about posters in their buildings, notifying them that community organizations would be coming around to encourage them to set appointments to get one of the COVID-19 vaccines.

I could not believe when I saw the line around Driftwood Community Centre, people all waiting to get their vaccination. On social media, the current trend is a celebration of vaccination. Our community leaders all proudly are rolling up their sleeves to show the world that they had been vaccinated.

There is good reason that all of this is happening. Africans in the diaspora are 3.5 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than Caucasians, according to a May 2020 analysis on MedRxiv. Every day, our media here in North America reminds us about the rise in cases, and deaths caused by COVID-19. The fear that has been caused by this is the reason for the rush. Our government officials and mainstream media remind us that the only way to curb the spread of COVID-19 is to get vaccinated, continue to wear our masks, and stay home.

It is important that we honour the feelings of everyone during this time. I completely understand why many are feeling strongly about getting this vaccine. Most of us just want to get back to the way things were in 2019, when we could go out with friends, visit family, and enjoy a night out. What we cannot do is discredit the stories and experiences of those who have experienced atrocities so horrible, that even though they are in the past, they have not been forgotten.

Racism within medicine is real, and it begins far outside of what we typically think of as the healthcare system. Africans in the Americas suffer from higher levels of stress and hypertension then their Caucasian counterparts, and this is largely driven by the racism they experience. These health disparities are also part of the reason why people of colour generally have higher mortality rates from COVID-19, as they are more likely to have underlying conditions that make COVID-19 even more dangerous.

What I want to do in this article is draw back the curtain of racism that is found in the healthcare system, and the reasons why there is such mistrust in the African-Caribbean community. I had the opportunity to watch Medical Racism; the New Apartheid, a new documentary co-produced by Children’s Health Defence (CHD), Centner Productions, Kevin Jenkins of the Urban Globe Health Alliance, Rev Tony Muhammed, and Author/Historian Curtis Cost.

The film (directed by Academy Award nominee David Massey) chronicles the long history of targeting minorities for unethical experiments, and the silence of physicians who allow these atrocities to continue. Many of us are familiar with the historic medical atrocities by CDC at Tuskegee, by the father of American gynecology, Dr J. Marion Sims on South Carolina slave girls, and the medical robbery of Henrietta Lacks. What we are not aware of is the routine medical barbarism that persists to this day. Some of these stories are hiding in plain sight, and the documentary takes viewers on a journey that will encourage them to question their medical professionals, and make decisions that will benefit themselves, and their families.

McGill; Office for Science and Society, Separating Sense from Nonsense, wrote a review on medical racism, “The Anti-Vaccine Propaganda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” Throughout the article, they found ways to pick apart his documentary stating that he mixed real examples of racism in healthcare and vaccine misinformation to push an anti-vaccine agenda on marginalized communities of colour.

I find that interesting, because at the very beginning, and at the end of the documentary, Robert Kennedy Jr., explains that he is not telling people not to get a vaccine, or to get the vaccine. What he wants people to be is educated on what they are putting in their bodies. Naturally, there are people who may not want this information out there because it would discredit the powers that want this vaccine out in the general public. What the documentary also does is empower individuals in marginalized communities to ask questions and take back control over their bodies.

The article from McGill spent a lot of time tearing down Robert Kennedy Jr.’s work, but what they did not do is highlight the experiences of parents who have experienced suffering through their children. Parents who have seen their children change drastically after receiving routine vaccines. The fact that autism runs rampant in the Somalian communities in America, the United Kingdom and right here in Toronto. What I learned is that in Somalia, they don’t even have a word that means autism. Many families only started experiencing autism in their communities when they emigrated from Somalia to Europe and the Americas.

What McGill also failed to mention is that medical researchers at the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Johns Hopkins University injected thousands of babies in the Third World with the experimental vaccine that reportedly caused chronic immune suppression and the deaths of an unknown number of babies.

How about the more than 1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in inner-city Los Angeles, who were enrolled in an experiment starting in June 1990? The McGill article makes no mention of the fact that the study was halted in October 1991 after there were repeated reports from vaccine trial sites in Africa that girl babies were dying in higher than expected numbers six months to three years after vaccination.

We cannot ignore the fact that CDC director David Satcher admitted in a June 17^th Los Angeles Times article that informed consent regulations had been violated, because the parents were not told their babies would be injected with an experimental vaccine that had never been licensed by the FDA for use in America.

Both Kaiser and the CDC have feverishly denied that any of the Los Angeles babies were harmed by the high potency EZ vaccine, but they did admit that one child, who received a standard potency EZ vaccine, died from a bacterial infection they maintain is unrelated to the vaccination.

In the same LA Times article, the CDC’s Chief Satcher referred to the failure to tell the parents in LA that the EZ vaccine was experimental as a “little mistake” and not a deliberate attempt to deceive them. It was maintained that the failure to inform the parents was an administrative “oversight.”

The New York Times article “Why Africa Fears Western Medicine,” (2007) openly discusses how Africa has harboured a number of high-profile Western medical interventionists, who have intentionally administered deadly agents under the guise of providing health care or conducting research.

In March 2000, Werner Bezwoda, a cancer researcher at South Africa’s Witwatersrand University, was fired after conducting medical experiments involving very high doses of chemotherapy on black breast-cancer patients, and apparently this was done without their knowledge or consent.

Richard McGown, a Scottish anesthesiologist, was accused of five murders and convicted in the deaths of two infant patients whom he injected with lethal doses of morphine in Zimbabwe (1995), and we can’t forget Dr. Michael Swango, who plead guilty to killing three American patients with lethal injections of potassium. He is also suspected of causing the deaths of sixty other people, many of them in Zimbabwe and Zambia during the 1980s and ’90s. Unfortunately, Dr. Swango was never tried on the African charges.

Probably the most notorious is Wouter Basson. He was charged with killing hundreds of Africans in South Africa and Namibia, from 1979 to 1987, many via injected poisons. Questionably, he was never convicted in South African courts, even though his lieutenants testified in detail about the medical crimes they conducted against Africans.

Is it no surprise that Africans, and Africans living in the Diaspora do not trust doctors or hospitals? Despite trends in the reduction of racial prejudice over recent decades, the continued marginalization of black Americans takes place at every level of the contemporary medical system.

Our world governments, and the medical community must address the real sense of suspicion, distrust, and cynicism that is deeply embedded in the African collective memory. Earning the trust of the community is a very difficult feat given our history, but medical education systems, hospitals, and physicians themselves must take steps to address this issue.

One way this can be done in Canada is by not forcing a vaccine on those who have doubts and mistrust. Instead, listen to their stories; don’t make them feel ostracized for feeling how they feel, and finally, let them know that they do have a choice. After all, Canada is the true North strong and free.