Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the PresentNATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book. "[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, 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. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust. |
Contents
PART | 1 |
PART | 8 |
PART 3 | 19 |
What Really | 75 |
The Eugenic Control of African American | 189 |
Radiation Experiments on African Americans | 216 |
Research on Black Prisoners | 244 |
Research Targets Young | 271 |
African American Martyrs to Surgical Technology | 347 |
American Bioterrorism Targets Blacks | 359 |
Medical Research with Blacks Today | 385 |
APPENDIX | 405 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 407 |
NOTES | 413 |
| 465 | |
| 485 | |
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Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black ... Harriet A. Washington No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
abuse African Americans Association believed biological birth black bodies blood bodies bones called cancer cause century chapter claimed clinical color common conducted consent dangerous death described developed died disease display dissection doctors drug early effects enslaved ethical eugenic example experimental experiments fact fear forced genetic heart hospital human hundred important infected inmates Institute Journal later laws least living medical research medical schools Medicine mental nature Negro never numbers offered owners pain patients percent person physicians poor population practice Press prisoners protect question race racial radiation records remains result risk scientific scientists Sims skin slave slavery social South southern subjects suffered surgical syphilis tests tion treated treatment trials Tuskegee United University vaccine Washington women York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present Anchor books |
| Author | Harriet A. Washington |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008 |
| ISBN | 076791547X, 9780767915472 |
| Length | 528 pages |
| Subjects | › › Biography & Autobiography / Medical (incl. Patients) History / African American & Black History / United States / General |
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