Pfizer and Moderna pharmaceutical companies are struggling to find African American participants in their coronavirus vaccine trials.
There are 12 coronavirus vaccine trials in phase 3 trial, but African Americans have been very reluctant to participate.
On September 28th Pfizer announced that it only had 9% of African Americans participating in its vaccine trials.
In late August Moderna reported the same 9% African American participation, but by the end of September, African American participation increased to 30%.
Moderna must’ve increased that financial payout for trial participation.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are trying to convince more African Americans to join coronavirus vaccine trials.
The presidents of Dillard University and Xavier University joined a vaccine trial and encouraged students to join as well.
“If we are not represented in the trial in significant numbers there are things we would not learn that is very important after the fact once the vaccine becomes fully applied,” Xavier University of Louisiana President Reynold Verret, stated.
A history professor at North Carolina State University, Blair Kelley, took to Twitter to criticize the HBCU presidents for their promotion of the vaccine trials.
“When you go and you put it on your university letterhead and you ask people who are your underlings, as your staff and faculty, and to the students who are beholden to you to have an education … you don’t want to take that power for granted,” Kelley said.
According to a Business Insider report, Black counties accounted for 58% of coronavirus deaths and 52% of nationwide cases.
“First and foremost you have to understand the historical implications and experience of Black Americans in this country as it comes to medicine,” Dr. Ala Stanford, founder of the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, told Business Insider. “I would say that African Americans don’t believe in a mistrustful healthcare system because that’s the experience of many in this country.”
African American skepticism with experimental health comes from a past of lies and manipulation from government health officials.
J. Marion Sims – an Confederate doctor who operated on enslaved black women without anesthesia to perfect his surgical techniques.
Tuskeegee Experiments – a clinical study done between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service, Black men were given syphilis to observe what happens when the disease is untreated.
Henrietta Lacks – a black woman whose cancer cells were used without her consent for 62 years for research purposes.
I would definitely not volunteer for a coronavirus vaccine trial no matter how much they are paying?
Would you volunteer for a coronavirus vaccine trial for the right price?
Source: Black Enterprise
