Medical Apartheid by Harriet A Washington

Medical Apartheid by Harriet A Washington

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it 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, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. 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. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.

Harriet A. Washington has worked as a Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada's Black Mountain Institute, a Harvard Medical School Research Fellow in Medical Ethics, a senior research fellow at Tuskegee University's National Center for Bioethics, and a visiting scholar at DePaul University College of Law. She has had fellowships at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Stanford University with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health A Horrible Thing to Waste, Deadly Monopolies, Infectious Madness, and Medical Apartheid, which earned the National Book Critics Circle Prize, the PEN/Oakland Award, and the American Library Association Black Caucus Nonfiction Award, is her first book.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780767915472
ISBN 10	076791547X
Title	Medical Apartheid
Author	Harriet A Washington
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2008-01-08
Number of pages	528
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.