I'm voting Republican

[S-Des]

Aren't there enough inhumanities existing in that time? Why use a may or may not have happened event? There is more than enough sadness there already.

That is a question I've been trying to understand my entire adult life. I feel no closer to answering it than when I started (probably further away). The saddest thing is that when urban legends (and I won't say with certainty that this didn't happen) get used to back up any attacks on a culture, the result is a general disregard for people as individuals. I guess the simplest answer is that it's easy to believe something so heinous (like the government giving syphillis to blacks), both because of past atrocities, and it feels good to a very unfortunate part of our psyche.

 

[Boxlicker101]

That is a question I've been trying to understand my entire adult life. I feel no closer to answering it than when I started (probably further away). The saddest thing is that when urban legends (and I won't say with certainty that this didn't happen) get used to back up any attacks on a culture, the result is a general disregard for people as individuals. I guess the simplest answer is that it's easy to believe something so heinous (like the government giving syphillis to blacks), both because of past atrocities, and it feels good to a very unfortunate part of our psyche.

If this is a reference to the Tuskeegee Blacks, you are misstating what happened. The syphilis was contracted in the more usual way. What happened then was that the government lied to the patients and did not treat the disease, wanting to document its progress. That was reprehensible and foul and evil enough, without making it any worse.

 

[Elianna]

Aren't there enough inhumanities existing in that time? Why use a may or may not have happened event? There is more than enough sadness there already.

I think I REALLY like you now.

 

[S-Des]

If this is a reference to the Tuskeegee Blacks, you are misstating what happened. The syphilis was contracted in the more usual way. What happened then was that the government lied to the patients and did not treat the disease, wanting to document its progress. That was reprehensible and foul and evil enough, without making it any worse.

That was my point, Box. That people mis-state what really happened in order to make whatever case they're trying to make at the moment. The urban myth in the Tuskeegee case is many similarities to the smallpox in the blankets story(although there is no proof one way or another in the latter). The bigger question is, why do people latch on to those conspiracy theories and refuse to even consider that they might not be true?

 

[DesertPirate]

That was my point, Box. That people mis-state what really happened in order to make whatever case they're trying to make at the moment. The urban myth in the Tuskeegee case is many similarities to the smallpox in the blankets story(although there is no proof one way or another in the latter). The bigger question is, why do people latch on to those conspiracy theories and refuse to even consider that they might not be true?

Could it be that most are not open minded? They see or hear what fits their preconceived ideas only.
It aint much but it kind of explains the extremists of any side.

 

[S-Des]

Could it be that most are not open minded? They see or hear what fits their preconceived ideas only.
It aint much but it kind of explains the extremists of any side.

Except that it's not just extremists. It's good, average, every-day people, who seem to want to believe something horrific. The 9/11 truthers are often fairly reasonable people about other ideas. There was a study that showed a huge portion of the US black population believes the Government AIDS conspiracy.....today! I just find the whole thing depressing.

 

[cloudy]

Lord Jeffrey1 Amherst was commanding general of British forces in North America during the final battles of the so-called French & Indian war (1754-1763).

Jeffrey Amherst's name became tarnished by stories of smallpox-infected blankets used as germ warfare against American Indians. These stories are reported, for example, in Carl Waldman's Atlas of the North American Indian [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. Waldman writes, in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by Chief Pontiac's forces during the summer of 1763:

Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort -- an early example of biological warfare -- which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer. [p. 108]

In 1763 in Pennsylvania, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander of the British forces....wrote in the postscript of a letter to Bouquet the suggestion that smallpox be sent among the disaffected tribes. Bouquet replied, also in a postscript,

"I will try to innoculate the[m]...with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not get the disease myself."

....To Bouquet's postscript, Amherst replied,

"You will do well as to try to innoculate the Indians by means of blankets as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this exorable race."

On June 24, Captain Ecuyer, of the Royal Americans, noted in his journal:

"Out of our regard for them (i.e. two Indian chiefs) we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."

Some people have doubted these stories; other people, believing the stories, nevertheless assert that the infected blankets were not intentionally distributed to the Indians, or that Lord Jeff himself is not to blame for the germ warfare tactic.

Historian Francis Parkman, in his book The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada [Boston: Little, Brown, 1886] refers to a postscript in an earlier letter from Amherst to Bouquet wondering whether smallpox could not be spread among the Indians:

Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them. [Vol. II, p. 39 (6th edition)

Several other letters from the summer of 1763 show the smallpox idea was not an anomaly. The letters are filled with comments that indicate a genocidal intent, with phrases such as:

"...that Vermine ... have forfeited all claim to the rights of humanity" (Bouquet to Amherst, 25 June)

"...put a most Effectual Stop to their very Being" (Amherst to Johnson, 27 August)

*****

In their own words, folks.