There Is No Village to Raise Black Children

by Phillip Jackson

Either you have a basic knowledge about the world, the skills necessary to navigate in the world and ability to learn and adapt to change, or you cannot compete in the new global human ecology. And if you cannot compete, there is no longer a place for you in the world.

“It takes a village to raise a child!” is an old African proverb that hundreds of millions of people have heard or used over the past years and that many people believe. But today in the Black community, that proverb has little relevance or importance. There is no village to raise Black children! And in many cases there is no family, and not even a parent or adult, to raise a Black child. There is no collective community effort to ensure that most Black children will grow up capable of succeeding in the 21st century. Unfortunately, African proverbs don’t raise children, people do.

Some of the obstacles that Black youth in America must overcome today are: Young Black girls and women are 20 times more likely to contract HIV/AIDS than young white girls and women. About 1 million young Black men are in jail (one half of the United States prison population) and only 600,000 are in college. The average 12th grade Black student has the reading and math scores of the average 8th grade white student. Only 38% of Black children are born into two-parent households, compared with 65% for Latino households and 77% for White households. Where is the village that will raise these children in the Black community?

In the 21st century, people are competing globally for resources and for their place in the world. Every day that you are alive, you must compete. This includes competing for food, healthcare, clothing, shelter, employment, and education. Nothing can be taken for granted any longer. Either you have a basic knowledge about the world, the skills necessary to navigate in the world and ability to learn and adapt to change, or you cannot compete in the new global human ecology. And if you cannot compete, there is no longer a place for you in the world.

The list of those who have failed Black children includes everyone from the United States government to Black leaders--including elected officials, faith-based leaders, community leaders, civil rights leaders, business leaders, the media and educators. Additionally, the United States government is complicit in this debacle with its formal silence while perpetuating policies, programs and practices that contribute to the demise of and chaos in the Black community. As a result, the continued existence of the Black community as a viable entity is in jeopardy.

The old model of child development in the Black community is broken and obsolete. To fix the aforementioned problems, a new system of child development is needed that will help Black parents and families successfully raise their children in the 21st century.

The Black Star Project has created The Black Star System of Child Development that teaches Black parents to work with school and community partners to educate and raise their children to be successful in our new global human ecology. The Black Star model of child development includes the following tenets:

Physical and emotional health
Communal consciousness and responsibility
Strong spiritual and moral convictions
Academic proficiency and intellectual curiosity
Affirming one’s culture and ancestry
Financial, economic and entrepreneurial literacy
Effective parenting
Responsible sexual behavior
Technological literacy
Exemplary global citizenship

This new model of child development has school as supporting agent rather than primary provider for a child’s development. Schools are only responsible for the academic preparation of a child. Parents, families and communities are responsible for all other important aspects of child development with the support of our government.

Do Black people have to be pushed to the brink of extinction before we wake up to the new realities of the 21st century? The only way that Black people can be saved is to make a maximum investment in the development and education of Black children, and in the education, growth and development of Black families and communities with support, resources and leadership from the government.

Without an action plan immediately and a structure to implement that plan, the racial academic achievement gap will not only persist, it will broaden--and it may last for another 200 years. That is ten future generations during which most Black children would be living in a pseudo-slavery without the rights, benefits and opportunities of other Americans, because the United States and the Black community refuse to do what is necessary to fix this problem.

Where is the village?

Phillip Jackson is executive director of the Chicago-based Black Star Project. He may be reached at blackstar1000@ameritech.net.

NIH-Sponsored AIDS Drugs Tests on Mothers and Babies

Sam Burcher

Sources for this report are available in the ISIS members site. Full details here

Deaths and adverse events in Uganda

The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) began studies on mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Uganda in 1997. A single dose of nevirapine was given to labouring mothers and to their newborn child. Those studies were reported to have lowered transmission of HIV by 50% [1].

But by 2002 , problems with the US-funded drug trials had been disclosed by an NIH auditor, medical experts and Boehringer Ingelheim, the makers of nevirapine [2].

The NIH hired Westat-Corp, a professional medical auditing firm to audit the Ugandan testing sites. Westat- Corp's report stated [3], “It appears likely in fact, that many adverse events and perhaps a significant number of serious adverse events for both mother and infant may not have been collected or reported in a timely manner.” The “adverse events ” included 14 deaths and thousands of severe reactions that went undisclosed. The NIH subsequently recorded all deaths and the majority of adverse reactions, but blamed them on the poor health of the patients, not on nevirapine.

In December 2004 , the Associated Press claimed that the adverse events in Uganda were censored and unknown to President Bush in 2002 when he announced his $500 million plan to push nevirapine across Africa to a million women a year. But before the plan went into effect, The NIH shut down the Ugandan research until the summer of 2003 to review the science and to make the necessary amends. They asked the National Academy of Sciences to investigate the case and spent millions of dollars on improving record keeping and safety monitoring. A top NIH disease official reviewing the case concluded that the use of nevirapine even in single doses could confer instant drug resistance to HIV - positive patients, which would prevent the use of any other available antiretroviral drugs for future treatment. Therefore it was unsuitable as a first drug of choice.

South African journalist and lawyer Anthony Brink published an article, The trouble with nevirapine [4 ], which revealed that all the pregnant women were on either AZT or nevirapine. There were no placebo groups. Brink saw the results of the unblinded trials, which c oncluded with an official recommendation for nevirapine. Side effects such as severe rash, pneumonia, blood cell-death , insufficient oxygen to tissues and blood , and tissue infection were recorded at 20 percent in both the AZT and nevirapine groups . Thirty-eight babies died; 22 in the AZT group and 16 in the nevirapine group. A further 16 deaths came to light in documents recently disclosed by Boerhingher Ingelheim, mostly in the Nevirapine group. But nevirapine gained approval because the rate of viral infection measured with PCR (a non - diagnostic test) was 13.1 percent in newborns.

Although all the women had tested positive for HIV, it is known that pregnancy produces antibodies that can give a false positive test result. A further anomaly noted by journalist Liam Scheff was that the newborn babies were tested for HIV transmission at 6 weeks and 14 weeks using a PCR testing kit called “the amplicor HIV-1 monitor test”, But PCR is not approved for viral testing and the manufacturers specifically warn against using it for the purpose of diagnosing HIV (Roche PCR HIV-1 Monitor Test). Furthermore, eighteen months is considered the earliest age for testing mother to child transmission of HIV [5].

In contrast, a study conducted on 561 expectant African mothers to assess the rates of mother-to- child transmission of HIV using no drugs, pills or placebos was 12 percent [6].

Boeringher Ingelheim had donated 411,000 doses of nevirapine to Africa, but withdrew its application to the FDA for approval for use in single dose on infants in America on the premise that better treatments have emerged.

Africans used as guinea pigs

The South African government responded to the Associated Press revelations by carrying an article in the ANC online journal ANC Today on 17 December 2004, accusing top US officials of treating Africans like guinea pigs and telling lies to promote the sale of AIDS drugs [7]. Jesse Jackson, the black civil rights activist and official US envoy to Africa, called for an US congressional investigation and demanded that nevirapine no longer be distributed in Africa. He said, “This was not a thoughtful and reasonable decision, but a crime against humanity. Research standards and drug quality that are unacceptable in the US and other Western countries must never be pushed onto Africa ” [8]. (But see “Guinea-pig kids”, this series)

Some doctors in Africa support the use of the drug , however; saying that without it many more babies would be born with HIV.

Kenyan study confirm s low effic a cy of nevirapine

A study on nevirapine in a hospital setting in Kenya examined the results of 172 breastfeeding women who presented their newborns for follow-up test after receiving a single dose of the drug. Blood samples were taken from babies at 6 weeks and 14 weeks after birth. Before the availability of antiretrovirals, HIV mother to baby transmission rate at the Coast Province General Hospital was 21.7 percent. After the use of nevirapine, the transmission rate was similar at 18.1 percent. The overall prevalence of HIV at the hospital is 14 percent, which has remained steady since 1995 [9].

The study concluded that the limited effect of nevirapine confirms the lack of benefits for maternal health and justifies the concerns about drug resistance. It also questions the enormous development of resources to provide nevirapine and recommends that the true health gains of nevirapine should be reconsidered.

Nevirapine tested on US mothers to be

But African mothers are not alone in being used as test subjects for nevirapine. Nevirapine is known as viramune in the US. The NIH sponsored a trial of viramune with expectant mothers in 2004 [10]. Joyce Halford was persuaded to take part in the trial by her doctors because she had tested HIV - positive during her pregnancy; otherwise she was a healthy 33 year-old . Some way into the trial, her doctors knew her liver was failing, but she was kept on viramune and died two weeks later of drug - induced hepatitis. Her child was cut from her in her dying moments. She and her family had not been shown the explicit warning on the viramune label that specifically states, “Patients with signs or symptoms of hepatitis must discontinue viramune and seek medical evaluation immediately.”