Warning: Government Can Be Harmful to Your Health

Trust in our government was a mere 19 percent in 2013 according to Pew Research Center. Not surprisingly, 56 per cent of Americans think it is not the government’s responsibility to provide a healthcare system. Waivers, favors, off-the-cuff rule changes, and the bungled launch of the Affordable Care Act website validate that distrust. Bureaucratic incompetence and cronyism are not the only reasons we should be wary of government involvement in our medical care. Let’s recall the appalling Tuskegee Syphilis Study lasting from 1932 to 1972. The U.S. Public Health Service used 400 hundred mainly poor, illiterate black sharecroppers with syphilis as lab animals. They were told they had “bad blood,” but not that they were actually suffering from a serious but treatable disease. All subjects succumbed to untreated syphilis so our government could track the natural progression of the disease. In 1989, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-sponsored study tested an experimental measles vaccine on 1,500 six-month old Black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles. The CDC admitted in 1996 that parents were never informed that the vaccine was experimental.