The National Medical Association, a group of Black physicians, has created a task force to independently vet COVID-19 drugs, vaccines and government regulations amid the coronavirus pandemic.

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“It’s necessary to provide a trusted messenger of vetted information to the African American community,” Leon McDougle, a family physician and president of the NMA, told StatNews. “There is a concern that some of the recent decisions by the Food and Drug Administration have been unduly influenced by politicians.”

McDougle explained that the group’s goal is to help address the suspicion in the Black community about a vaccine, given the community’s dark history of dangerous medical testing, like the infamous Tuskegee experiment.

“I think this will help to increase uptake in the African American community, if members of our task force give it the green light,” McDougle said. But he emphasized that their stamp of approval would come only if data shows that the vaccine is, in fact, effective and safe.

Source: Black doctors’ group forms task force to review virus vaccine