Medical Apartheid- The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

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Web ID: 15624300

NATIONAL 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.

  • Product Features

    • Suggetsed age range- Adult
    • Format- Paperback
    • Product dimensions- 5.5" W x 8.25" H x 1.05" D
    • Genre- Social sciences
    • Publisher- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Publication date- 01-08-2008
    • Page count- 528
    • ISBN- 9780767915472
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4.8/5

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4 months ago
from Chicago, IL

Medical history untold

I listened to this book on Audible two years ago, it was so compelling I had to purchase a hard copy.

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

7 months ago

Heartbreaking....

This book is appalling. The experiments done on people of color in the 1700’s, almost to the present, are barbaric. Doctors knew very little at that time, and they learned from the bodies of enslaved people and poor people who didn’t get a choice. What they learned only applied to African American bodies because their bodies are a lot different from whites. The Tuskegee Study is explained in detail and significantly differs from what we have been told! The book went deep in examining the history of medically justified and pseudo-science-backed abuses of African Americans from colonial to modern times. The author traces American racism from a medical standpoint from the early days, when science was more curious than anything else, to the days of slavery, when religion and science went hand in hand to justify by divine sanction, on the one hand, and by scientific reason, on the other, that enslaved Black people were inferior to their white masters- morally, physically and mentally.

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

11 months ago
from Brooklyn, NY

Amazing

This book is great for essay writing, research, and simply self educating. Definitely opened my eyes about how I govern myself and love myself in modern day.

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

5 years ago
from Sacramento

An informative historical read

Medical Apartheid provides a vivid description of the American Medical community's abuse of the black body, and the resulting culture of mistrust of medical providers and medicine.

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

5 years ago
from Gonzales, LA

Mind-blowing

This should be required reading for everyone especially those seeking to enter the healthcare field. I just finished up the introduction and was introduced to so many instances of unethical experimentation that I had never heard of before! A quick Google search will reveal that many African Americans are apprehensive of healthcare professional and the lack of the Black doctors. But not many dive into why that is--Black Americans were excluded for a long time from entering medical schools. Henrieta Lacks and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments are more well known examples of unethical experimentation on Black Americans. But the Mississippi Appendectomy, Grandison Harris and the Medical College of George, and Project MK-Ultra were all stories I got to learn more in depth about. Thank you to Harriet A. Washington for authoring this important book.

Recommends this product

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com