Presidents Walter Kimbrough of Dillard University and Reynold Verret of Xavier University sent letters to their university communities earlier this month saying they decided to participate in a Phase 3 trial of a vaccine in development by Pfizer.
they wrote.
“It is of the utmost importance that a significant number of black and brown subjects participate,” they wrote, “so that the effectiveness of these vaccines be understood across the many diverse populations that comprise these United States.”
Health experts have stressed the importance of a diverse pool of volunteers in Covid-19 vaccine trials, especially because the pandemic has disproportionately impacted communities of color.
“I just kept seeing all of the articles that indicated we don’t have good representation,” Kimbrough told CNN. “People are making the case that you don’t know if it works for all populations if you don’t have a robust sample.”
But the response has been largely negative, he said, with some people comparing him to a “lab rat.”
“I think overwhelmingly people are skeptical,” he said.
Tuskegee syphilis study. Critics on social media also cited the study, commonly known as the Tuskegee Experiment.
nvolved doctors with the US Public Health Service deliberately leaving Black men untreated for syphilis so they could study the course of the infection. They did this despite the fact that penicillin emerged during the course of the study as a viable and effective treatment.
Kimbrough and Verret acknowledged Tuskegee and other “unethical examples of medical research” in their letter — instances that had undermined “trust in health providers and caretakers” among African Americans.
In an interview on SiriusXM earlier this month, Dr. Anthony Fauci stressed that skepticism from minority communities needed to be met with transparency. He also cited Tuskegee as a big reason for the distrust.
“The track record of how government and medical experimenters have treated the African American community is not something to be proud of,” he said.
Baker told CNN’s Poppy Harlowe. But Baker trusted her doctor of more than 30 years who asked her to participate.
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