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The first comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between Africans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the way both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without a hint of informed consent--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and a view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. New details about the government's Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, and private institutions. This book reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit.--From publisher description.… (more)
An excellent, thorough, and sickening recounting of how Black people have been abused and used by the medical community for centuries. It is so far beyond the Tuskegee syphilis trials or the Henrietta Lacks genes, this has been systemic failure or purposeful abuse for as long as medicine has existed. And though it is no longer going on in our country (as far as we know), it has moved to the African continent where research is taking place outside the restrictions of our laws. A very important read, especially if you ever questioned why a Black person might be medical treatment hesitant. ( )
An important read, though coming to it almost two decades after publication also does place the contemporary chapters at the end as a historical set. Densely researched with end notes (I read this as an ebook, so helpfully they were a link away instead of flipping back and forth), should definitely be part of a scientist's bibliography when considering ethical research populations if humans are involved.
Also, this ended up being on the denser side for book club- I did finally finish, but far past the July deadline, whoops. ( )
Many terrible things have been done to African Americans for the sake of medical experiments. There's no denying this. Some of the examples given in this work were incredibly gut wrenching to read; almost impossible to believe that people could be so cruel to each other. The practice hasn't ceased to exist but things have gotten better. The author does make this statement a couple of times. So the problem I had with this book was its' almost universal condemnation of the medical field. There are always two sides to every story and for me, the author's almost complete lack of objectivity took away from the over all credibility of the book. ( )
This book by Harriet J. Washington is very well researched. It is also a text that has taken be a long time to get through as I could only read 1 chapter at a time - then I needed to internalized and come to grips with the information and truths each chapter contained. I was truly and deeply affected by the unethical behaviors, lack of both truth and informed consent , coercion to care. As I read this, I also thought of the "Radium Girls" as both contained multiplicities of coverups. I salute Harriet Washington for her work as an ethicist and for opening my eyes to realities of medical apartheid that was present then and unfortunately is still with us today. That must be changed and this book is the perfect catalyst to action. While a difficult read, this is a MUST READ! ( )
When I began working at the institute, I recalled my adolescent dream of becoming a medical research worker. Daily I saw young…[white] boys and girls receiving instruction in chemistry and medicine that the average black boy or girl could never receive. When I was alone, I wandered and poked my fingers into strange chemicals, watched intricate machines trace red and black lines upon ruled paper. At times I paused and stared at the walls of the rooms, at the floors, at the wide desks at which the white doctors sat; and I realized—with a feeling that I could never quite get used to—that I was looking at the world of another race.
—RICHARD WRIGHT, 1944
The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.
—CHIEF U.S. PROSECUTOR ROBERT JACKSON, OPENING STATEMENT, NUREMBERG DOCTORS’ TRIAL, DECEMBER 9, 1946
Dedication
For Ron DeBose, my husband, with undying love and gratitude
First words
On a sylvan stretch of New York’s patrician upper Fifth Avenue, just across from the New York Academy of Medicine, a colossus in marble, august inscriptions, and a bas-relief caduceus grace a memorial bordering Central Park.
Quotations
Last words
I challenge us to change, because as Charles Darwin once observed, “It is not the strongest species that will survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
The first comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between Africans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the way both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without a hint of informed consent--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and a view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. New details about the government's Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, and private institutions. This book reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit.--From publisher description.
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