Medical Apartheid
Medical Apartheid
In the book, Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington touches on some major soft points, that really made me think and I believe that if many other people read this they would be surprised as well, because when she goes into detail about the cruel treating of African Americans in the past, it is just shocking to find out what we didn’t know. Basically, Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. It begins with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it talks about the way that 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 present times, 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. It also talked about the Tuskegee Experiment which was the most shocking out of all of it. The Tuskegee Experiment was a study that began in 1932; Investigators enrolled in the study 399 impoverished African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Ala., infected with syphilis. For participating in the study, the men were given free medical exams, free meals and free burial insurance. They were never told they had syphilis, nor were they ever treated for it. According to the book, Medical Apartheid, the men were told they were being treated for
In the book, Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington touches on some major soft points, that really made me think and I believe that if many other people read this they would be surprised as well, because when she goes into detail about the cruel treating of African Americans in the past, it is just shocking to find out what we didn’t know. Basically, Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. It begins with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it talks about the way that 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 present times, 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. It also talked about the Tuskegee Experiment which was the most shocking out of all of it. The Tuskegee Experiment was a study that began in 1932; Investigators enrolled in the study 399 impoverished African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Ala., infected with syphilis. For participating in the study, the men were given free medical exams, free meals and free burial insurance. They were never told they had syphilis, nor were they ever treated for it. According to the book, Medical Apartheid, the men were told they were being treated for