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Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of history there, unfortunately. The US medical establishment has a long track record of experimenting on Black people -- from performing experimental surgery (without anesthetic) on slaves to infecting Black US soldiers with syphilis to study how the disease progressed that continued until the 70s.

All this to say nothing of how the medical establishment generally under serves minorities. There's quite a bit of writing on why it might be so hard for these major pharma corps to find volunteers from these communities.

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If I were a black man in America, and they wanted me as a volunteer in Phase 1, I have to say that the history there would be a pretty big negative factor in my mind. Volunteering for Phase 1 is an act of trust, because by definition there's not much data yet. If I were an African-American, I don't know that I would have that kind of trust in big corporations.

Why would you trust big corporations as an American, period? History shows us that they will take every opportunity they are given to make or save a buck, from virtually enslaving people via company towns and company scrip, to killing people for unionizing, to polluting the places we live, to covering up evidence that their products do harm, and to suppressing evidence of the severity climate change for literal decades.

These things are all so well known, it isn't even worth the effort to track down citations for them, and you still trust them?

The monolith? Or the few who had people with lapses in judgement?

Are you saying corporate structure in the law causes these actions?

For purposes of the current discussion, it doesn't much matter. We see corporate abuse happening all the time, every day. If I had to speculate it's that corporate executives have very strong incentives to do everything to make or save a buck, up to and including the things I've mentioned and more.

The things I mentioned previously did not involve any lapse of judgement at all. Saying that is just being an apologist. I'm not saying you're suggesting lapses of judgement are responsible for these things, merely that actually suggesting so would make one an apologist. They are all done with eyes open, focusing on the dollar signs at the end of the road, public interest be damned.

You're taking negative actions by some and applying it to a class.

I'm simply stating that they are negative actions by some. If that didn't come across, here it is.

Maybe the corporations do sometimes positive stuff too. You know, like vaccines.

Of course they do. If I were an African-American, I would be suspicious that they might be doing that in a way that puts more risk on me, and more benefit on people that look like the ones in the boardroom. Not saying that's true, but I could totally understand how any African-American who knows their history, would be more suspicious than the average white American.

I hate to Godwin this thread already, but, you know, Hitler did positive things, too. For neither corporations nor Hitler do these things make up for literal crimes against humanity they have committed.

https://www.quora.com/We-all-know-the-evil-that-Hitler-did-W...

Edit: Well, since people are obviously not even reading the link, I'm going to quote the bullet points from the first answer in nearly their entirety:

> Nazi regime was the first to introduce animal rights and limited hunting seasons. Hitler had outlawed animal testing (who needs animals when you got thousands of Untermenschen).

> Nazis had the first public anti smoking campaign at a time when smoking was not linked to cancer.

> Hitler had authorized extensive research on cancer and various venereal diseases and abundance of medicine for public.

> Nazi labour laws were best in contemporary world. Reduced work hours, periodic breaks, paid holidays and sponsored trips to Italy as perks.

> Promoted sports culture among youth which led to Germany being a sports power house.

> Hosted the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

> Hitler had announced loans of 1000 Reichsmark (10 month salary in 1939) for married couples at minimal interest and waivers for birth of first child.

> Volkswagen - people's car. Personalized Cars for average germans was laid out in 1937. Volkswagen is an extremely popular brand now.

> German Autobahn(super highways) was introduced in Hitler's era.

> Hitler had forbade German army from using mustard gas or any sort of chemical weapons on enemy forces because of the trauma he suffered in WW1 from mustard gas. As a result, deadly gas warfare of WW 1 was never seen in WW 2.

> Nazis were pioneers in rocket science. America's space programs were guided and led by former Nazi scientists like Werner von Braun and Arthur Rudolph.

> Nazi labour laws were best in contemporary world. Reduced work hours, periodic breaks, paid holidays and sponsored trips to Italy as perks.

They got sponsored trips to a lot of places in Europe: Poland, France, Russia...probably best to avoid that last one though.

You know that's precisely my point, right? There's a long list of things they did that were right, good, and/or positive, but that doesn't excuse crimes against humanity.

If I were a black man in America, which I am, and they wanted me as as volunteer in Phase 1, I'd say hell yes.

You say "if I were a black man", as if you have any idea of what it means to be a black man in America

Serious question, can someone who downvoted the parent comment please explain why? This sounds in line with what I've heard about treatment of African Americans by the US medical system, so I would love to hear if there is evidence to say this is wrong.

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