SCXT 320 Science and Racial Prejudice
Consequences of Eugenics--The Contested Etiology of Pellagra--4

 

The Goldberger Experiments II

Economic data

Working with a U.S. Public Health economist, he reached the following conclusions:
 
1900 to 1913

Wage rates increased less than 25%
1907 to 1908

Wages in the South increased less than 5%
1900 to 1913

Food prices increased by 60%

 

Transmissibility Experiments of 1916 (Fifteen Men and a Housewife)

 

Goldberger, several other researchers, and his wife undertook the following research procedures:

  • injecting the fresh blood of people sick with pellagra into their own bodies
  • swallowing vials bearing "little dough balls impregnated with the urine and feces of sufferers
  • swallowing vials of dough balls combined with the scaled-off skin of the afflicted.
None of those exposed contracted pellagra!

 

Mississippi Convict Study

In 1915 Goldberger and 12 convict volunteers in Mississippi lived on a high-carbohydrate, high-fat, no-protein diet. Allof the volunteers contraced pellagra. All were subsequently cured when their diets were changed.