Latest news with #UniversityofTexasRioGrandeValley
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
New paper sheds light on experience of Black prisoners in infamous Stateville prison malaria experiments
Much has been said and written over the years about controversial malaria research conducted on inmates at Illinois' Stateville Penitentiary starting in the 1940s. But at least one part of that story has been largely ignored until now: the role of Black prisoners in that research, which helped lead to the modern practice of using genetic testing to understand how individual patients will react to certain medications, according to the authors of a newly published paper out of the University of Utah. 'We want to highlight the stories of Black prisoners that participated in this prison research in the 1950s onward and give them their due,' said Hannah Allen, a medical ethicist and assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and first author of the paper, which was published as an opinion piece Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 'They haven't been properly acknowledged in the past, and their participation in these studies was really foundational in launching the field of pharmacogenetics and, later on, precision medicine,' said Allen, who recently completed her doctorate at the University of Utah. Starting in the 1940s, researchers infected inmates at the Joliet-area prison with malaria to test the effectiveness of drugs to treat the illness as part of a U.S. military-funded effort to protect American troops overseas, according to the paper. A University of Chicago doctor was the principal investigator. The inmates consented to being part of the studies and were paid for their participation. At first, the research was greeted with enthusiasm. In 1945, Life magazine ran a spread about it, featuring a photo of a Stateville inmate with cups containing malaria-carrying mosquitoes pressed against his bare chest. The first line of the story reads, 'In three U.S. penitentiaries men who have been imprisoned as enemies of society are now helping science fight another enemy of society.' But as the years passed, attitudes began to shift. Questions arose about whether inmates could truly, freely consent to participate in medical experiments or whether they felt coerced into them because of their often dire circumstances. At the Nuremberg trials, defense attorneys for Nazi doctors introduced text and images from the Life article about Stateville prison, though an Illinois physician argued at the trials that the prisoners in Stateville consented to being part of medical research whereas Nazi prisoners did not, according to the JAMA paper. In the mid-1970s, news broke about a study at Tuskegee, in which Black men with syphilis went untreated for years — news that raised awareness of ethical problems in medical research. News outlets also began publishing more stories about prison research, according to the JAMA article. The Chicago Tribune published an article in 1973, in which an inmate participating in the Stateville malaria research said: 'I've been coerced into the project — for the money. Being here has nothing to do with 'doing good for mankind' … I didn't want to keep taking money from my family.' The experiments at Stateville came to a halt in the 1970s. A number of protections and regulations are now in place when it comes to research involving prisoners. Since the 1970s, the Stateville research has often been discussed and analyzed but little attention has been paid to its Black participants, said James Tabery, a medical ethicist and philosophy professor at the University of Utah who led the new research, which was funded by the federal National Institutes of Health. For a time, Black prisoners were excluded from the studies because of a myth that Black people were immune to malaria, Tabery said. Later on, once scientists had pinpointed the drug primaquine as an effective medication for malaria, they turned their attention to the question of why 5% to 10% of Black men experienced a violent reaction to the drug, according to the paper. Ultimately, the scientists were successful, finding that the adverse reaction was related to a specific genetic deficiency. 'There are people all over Chicago today that are getting tested, that clinicians are recommending they get a genetic test before they get prescribed a drug because they want to make sure that their patient isn't going to have an adverse reaction to the drug,' Tabery said. 'It's really sort of powerful and interesting that you can trace that approach to doing good clinical medicine right back to this particular moment and place and population.' But Tabery and Allen also found that the Black prisoners were not treated the same as the white prisoners who participated in research at Stateville. For one, they weren't paid as much as the white prisoners, the rationale being that the white prisoners were infected with malaria, whereas the Black prisoners were given the drug but not infected with the disease — though some of the Black prisoners got very ill after taking the medication, according to the paper. Also, researchers didn't protect the Black participants' privacy as well as they did for other participants. They published certain identifying information about the Black participants, such as initials, ages, heights and weights, whereas participants in the previous research were represented with case numbers, according to the paper. Researchers also recruited the Black prisoners' family members for the study, which they didn't do with earlier participants, according to the paper. 'You see them just doing things with the Black prisoners that they're not doing with the white prisoners,' Tabery said. Also, though scientists made an important discovery through the research on Black prisoners, the episode also highlights the difficulty that can occur in translating discoveries into real life help for patients. Though the World Health Organization now recommends genetic testing to protect people who are sensitive to antimalarials, many of the people who would benefit most from such testing still don't receive it because of financial barriers, supply chain issues and a lack of training, according to the paper. 'What we found is when you sort of shift to what was happening to the Black prisoners, these other lessons you hadn't thought of as being derivable from Stateville suddenly do become apparent,' Tabery said.
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Health
- Chicago Tribune
New paper sheds light on experience of Black prisoners in infamous Stateville prison malaria experiments
Much has been said and written over the years about controversial malaria research conducted on inmates at Illinois' Stateville Penitentiary starting in the 1940s. But at least one part of that story has been largely ignored until now: the role of Black prisoners in that research, which helped lead to the modern practice of using genetic testing to understand how individual patients will react to certain medications, according to the authors of a newly published paper out of the University of Utah. 'We want to highlight the stories of Black prisoners that participated in this prison research in the 1950s onward and give them their due,' said Hannah Allen, a medical ethicist and assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and first author of the paper, which was published as an opinion piece Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 'They haven't been properly acknowledged in the past, and their participation in these studies was really foundational in launching the field of pharmacogenetics and, later on, precision medicine,' said Allen, who recently completed her doctorate at the University of Utah. Starting in the 1940s, researchers infected inmates at the Joliet-area prison with malaria to test the effectiveness of drugs to treat the illness as part of a U.S. military-funded effort to protect American troops overseas, according to the paper. A University of Chicago doctor was the principal investigator. The inmates consented to being part of the studies and were paid for their participation. At first, the research was greeted with enthusiasm. In 1945, Life magazine ran a spread about it, featuring a photo of a Stateville inmate with cups containing malaria-carrying mosquitoes pressed against his bare chest. The first line of the story reads, 'In three U.S. penitentiaries men who have been imprisoned as enemies of society are now helping science fight another enemy of society.' But as the years passed, attitudes began to shift. Questions arose about whether inmates could truly, freely consent to participate in medical experiments or whether they felt coerced into them because of their often dire circumstances. At the Nuremberg trials, defense attorneys for Nazi doctors introduced text and images from the Life article about Stateville prison, though an Illinois physician argued at the trials that the prisoners in Stateville consented to being part of medical research whereas Nazi prisoners did not, according to the JAMA paper. In the mid-1970s, news broke about a study at Tuskegee, in which Black men with syphilis went untreated for years — news that raised awareness of ethical problems in medical research. News outlets also began publishing more stories about prison research, according to the JAMA article. The Chicago Tribune published an article in 1973, in which an inmate participating in the Stateville malaria research said: 'I've been coerced into the project — for the money. Being here has nothing to do with 'doing good for mankind' … I didn't want to keep taking money from my family.' The experiments at Stateville came to a halt in the 1970s. A number of protections and regulations are now in place when it comes to research involving prisoners. Since the 1970s, the Stateville research has often been discussed and analyzed but little attention has been paid to its Black participants, said James Tabery, a medical ethicist and philosophy professor at the University of Utah who led the new research, which was funded by the federal National Institutes of Health. For a time, Black prisoners were excluded from the studies because of a myth that Black people were immune to malaria, Tabery said. Later on, once scientists had pinpointed the drug primaquine as an effective medication for malaria, they turned their attention to the question of why 5% to 10% of Black men experienced a violent reaction to the drug, according to the paper. Ultimately, the scientists were successful, finding that the adverse reaction was related to a specific genetic deficiency. 'There are people all over Chicago today that are getting tested, that clinicians are recommending they get a genetic test before they get prescribed a drug because they want to make sure that their patient isn't going to have an adverse reaction to the drug,' Tabery said. 'It's really sort of powerful and interesting that you can trace that approach to doing good clinical medicine right back to this particular moment and place and population.' But Tabery and Allen also found that the Black prisoners were not treated the same as the white prisoners who participated in research at Stateville. For one, they weren't paid as much as the white prisoners, the rationale being that the white prisoners were infected with malaria, whereas the Black prisoners were given the drug but not infected with the disease — though some of the Black prisoners got very ill after taking the medication, according to the paper. Also, researchers didn't protect the Black participants' privacy as well as they did for other participants. They published certain identifying information about the Black participants, such as initials, ages, heights and weights, whereas participants in the previous research were represented with case numbers, according to the paper. Researchers also recruited the Black prisoners' family members for the study, which they didn't do with earlier participants, according to the paper. 'You see them just doing things with the Black prisoners that they're not doing with the white prisoners,' Tabery said. Also, though scientists made an important discovery through the research on Black prisoners, the episode also highlights the difficulty that can occur in translating discoveries into real life help for patients. Though the World Health Organization now recommends genetic testing to protect people who are sensitive to antimalarials, many of the people who would benefit most from such testing still don't receive it because of financial barriers, supply chain issues and a lack of training, according to the paper. 'What we found is when you sort of shift to what was happening to the Black prisoners, these other lessons you hadn't thought of as being derivable from Stateville suddenly do become apparent,' Tabery said.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cameron County voters to decide arena proposal for a third time
Apr. 17—Cameron County is taking another shot at getting its own 10,000-seat multi-purpose arena, and officials are hoping that voters this time around will approve a proposition on the May 3 ballot that would allow the county's existing venue/visitor tax revenue to be used for the purpose. Similar propositions were voted down in November 2021 and May 2022, although voters in 2016 approved a proposition allowing such revenue — generated by Hotel Occupancy Taxes and taxes on car rentals in the county — to be used for improvements to Isla Blanca Park and construction of the South Texas Ecotourism Center. This time, the political action committee Cameron County Now is leading the charge to get the word out, in part through the PAC's "Vote for the Venue" advertising campaign. Sara Marie Ridley, coordinator of Cameron County Now and its ad campaign, said the latest bid to finally get "Proposition A" over the finish line is using more of a targeted approach compared to the previous attempts. "We have gone and found the group of voters who always come out in May elections, rain or shine, and we're trying to educate them better on the issue, knowing that they're the people who are going to show up," she said. "So instead of trying to put a lot of information out to a massive amount of people, we are trying to take a better, more precise message to a smaller group of people. That means likely voters in odd-year May elections." Ridley said it was also revealed that many voters weren't necessarily opposed to an arena, they just didn't have a reason to care. One thing that has changed since the previous two votes is the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley's decision late last year to move Brownsville campus graduation to Edinburg, Ridley noted. Discussions between city and county leadership and UT officials about moving graduation back to Brownsville have borne fruit, which could cast the ballot question in a new light for some voters, she said. "What we found, the usage of the arena that people were most interested in were graduations," Ridley said. "The fact that (UTRGV) and (Texas Southmost College) and the area high schools would now have a place that was both indoors and not a football field in the middle of June, and is big enough to hold these types of events where students weren't going to be limited to four tickets per family." That issue is important to families, as opposed to having a venue that can draw major concerts and other events, she said. Ridley doesn't think the graduation aspect was articulated well enough the first two times around. The cost of building the arena is estimated at between $175 million and $250 million. According to the Proposed Cameron County Multi-Purpose Arena Market & Financial Feasibility Study, which was published in January, the facility would have "total fixed capacity" of 10,070 fixed seats and total capacity of 12,070. The arena would anchor the Madeira mixed-use residential-commercial development, which just held its grand opening March 24. Madeira is located just off I-69E halfway between Brownsville and Harlingen, phase one of the development encompassing 100 acres. The Brownsville City Commission in March endorsed construction of the arena as a "quality-of-life project and catalyst for economic development to meet the region's needs for entertainment, sports and community events." Describing herself as a "professional politico" who runs ballot initiatives around the country, Ridley said the only way ballot initiatives succeed is when the positive local impact is made clear. "It seems very simple," she said. "But if you cannot articulate the way a family whose been in Brownsville for generations should care about an arena — they can go to a concert. They'll go to San Antonio. That doesn't matter to them. "But when you get to tell Grandma that she gets to see her first generation college student graduate, and she can do it indoors and it doesn't matter if it's raining, that actually means something to folks. I think that's the chord we're trying to strike, and let folks know that there really is a local benefit to this, not to mention the tax revenue and all of that." Featured Local Savings
Axios
22-02-2025
- Axios
Texas 60-mile walk to highlight the Underground Railroad to Mexico
Advocates, historians, and descendants of enslaved people are planning to join a 60-mile walk in Texas to bring attention to the Underground Railroad to Mexico — a lesser-known route that helped enslaved people escape to freedom. Why it matters: The "Walking Southern Roads to Freedom," scheduled for March 3 to 9 in South Texas, is the latest development drawing attention to a largely forgotten episode of Black/Latino history amid a new surge of research and advocacy around the route. Zoom in: Organizers say the walk will begin at La Sal del Rey, a salt lake in Hidalgo County, Texas, and pass many historic sites believed to be connected to the Underground Railroad to Mexico. Faith leaders, descendants, artists from Philadelphia and Kansas City, andrepresentatives from the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center in Cambridge, Maryland, are expected to join the seven-day march. Organizers say the walk will begin in La Sal del Rey, a salt lake in Hidalgo County, Texas and go through many historic sites believed to be connected to the Underground Railroad to Mexico. The event will also include a stop in Mexico to commemorate country's role in the underground walk to freedom. The walk will end in the border town of McAllen, Texas. The intrigue: The event is a culmination of research by Roseann Bacha-Garza, a program manager for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley's Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools in Edinburg, Texas. She said the gathering will "increase awareness about the resilience and resolve of freedom seekers of African ancestry who participated in underground railroad-like activities from south Texas to Mexico." Bacha-Garza said the plans for the walk began after the school received a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom designation for the Jackson Ranch Church and Martin Jackson Cemetery in San Juan, Texas, from the U.S. National Park Service. Those sites once served as a gateway to Mexico for enslaved people seeking freedom. Zoom out: The Jackson ranch was located next to another owned by Silvia Hector Webber — dubbed by some historians as the " Harriet Tubman" of the Underground Railroad to Mexico — and her husband, John, who was white. The Webbers built a ferry landing on their property to help enslaved escapees move along the Colorado River toward Mexico, says Ohio State history professor María Esther Hammack. Context: Historians have known for decades that some enslaved Black people in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alabama escaped slavery by heading south. Oral histories, archives of slave escape ads, and narratives of formerly enslaved people show that fleeing to Mexico had been a possibility leading up to the U.S. Civil War. Abolitionists wrote about "colonies" of formerly enslaved Black people popping up in towns across northern Mexico — a country that had abolished slavery in the 1830s. Yes, but: How many people fled south of the border remained a mystery, and historians debate just how well-organized the network was. The Plano African American Museum in Plano, Texas, is opening an exhibit on March 6 called "Risking It All For Freedom: Women Who Crafted The Underground Railroad Into Mexico." It is being partly organized by the descendants of Silvia Hector Webber.
