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The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Doubleday
January 2007
On Sale: January 9, 2007
512 pages ISBN: 0385509936 EAN: 9780385509930 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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.
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