Explaining Brazil #171: Brazil’s own Tuskegee Study

The “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” was an infamous syphilis study conducted by the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) — and one of the biggest health scandals in modern history. Its goal was to “observe the natural history of untreated syphilis” in black populations, but the subjects were completely unaware of the study’s purpose, being told instead they were receiving treatment for “bad blood” when, in fact, they received no treatment at all.

In Brazil, two major HMOs are accused of doing a similar thing with Covid patients — treating them with unproven medicines touted by President Jair Bolsonaro and his allies. Doctors say they were forced to peddle chloroquine to patients, and claim that the government was interested in using the study to bolden its anti-lockdown stance.

Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device:

Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Deezer

Guest:

• Amanda Audi is one of The Brazilian Report’s Brasília correspondents. She is the former executive director of Congresso em Foco and worked as a reporter for The Intercept Brasil, Folha de S. Paulo, O Globo, Gazeta do Povo, Poder360, among others. In 2019, she won the Comunique-se Award for best-written media reporter and won the Mulher Imprensa award for web journalism in 2020

Background reading:

• While investigating the scandals involving chloroquine being administered by private health insurers in dodgy experiments, Amanda Audi found out that these tests were led by a family of doctors, who have remained under the radar of the Covid inquiry so far.
• Listen to Episode #110, “Bolsonaro’s ‘miracle’ cure for Covid-19,” in which we explain President Bolsonaro’s obsession with antimalarial drug chloroquine.
• Despite overwhelming evidence proving that Jair Bolsonaro’s “early Covid treatment” is gibberish, he still used the United Nations’ stage to defend it.
• Read about the infamous Tuskegee Experiment, which is one the root causes for many African Americans to be skeptical of vaccines (such as Covid immunizers) until this day.

Do you have a suggestion for our next Explaining Brazil podcast? Drop us a line at podcast@brazilian.report

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

• #chloroquine
• #government
• #health