FEATURE
VACCINATED LIVES MATTER AUTHORS Lewis Hargett , MD , & Mark Burns , MD
Our present pandemic from
COVID-19 has resulted in the largest physical and economic disaster of this century : at the time of this writing , over 80 million cases and 1.6 million worldwide deaths have been reported to the World Health
Organization ( WHO ). In the US alone , there have been around 22 million cases diagnosed , and we are heading to 400,000 deaths .
The potential endpoint for this catastrophe could be in sight , but much older pandemics of medical racism , mistreatment in biomedical research and barriers to care are intersecting in ways that have caused marginalized populations to be disproportionately affected by illnesses like COVID-19 . These evils have created an understandable reluctance among minority communities to get the vaccines that could protect them . We all have an urgent duty to encourage vaccination .
Several vaccines have been in development for months , and on Dec . 11 , 2020 the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) approved the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNtech for emergency use authorization ( EUA ) to help combat this deadly virus . This COVID -19 vaccine was shown to be about 95 % effective at preventing illness caused by the coronavirus in clinical trial participants , regardless of age , race or health risks . The COVID-19 Moderna vaccine was 94.5 % effective in preventing coronavirus infection during clinical trials and was approved for EUA on Dec . 18 , 2020 as well . According to the PEW Research Center ( a nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington , D . C .), 60 % of Americans say they would definitely or probably get a vaccine for the coronavirus ; however , only 42 % of Blacks say they would get a COVID-19 vaccine once it is available , as compared to 61 % of whites . The amount of confidence in research , including medical researchers , is similarly divided , as Black ( 33 %) or Hispanic ( 30 %) Americans are much less likely to say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists than white Americans ( 43 %).
Looking back at the history of medical research , we can easily find a tragically long list of examples that contribute to that reluctance , to that distrust . Henrietta Lacks has become a near-household name after a book published in 2010 and the follow-up movie shared the legacy of her cells , the violations committed by the medical establishment to collect them and the generations of ramifications for her family . Biomedical researchers stole a sample of her cells without her consent , conducted experiments , released her name and private medical records to the media and even published her cells ’ genome .
Perhaps the most egregious and notorious is the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment , which began in 1932 . The Public Health
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