Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Speaker: Harriet A. Washington, author
Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of the
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 blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well
as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the 20th century,
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.
Shocking 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. Medical
Apartheid 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.
Reception and Book Sale to follow
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