Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Written by Harriet A. Washington
Narrated by Ron Butler
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
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.
Harriet A. Washington
Harriet A. Washington is the author of Medical Apartheid, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Oakland Award, and the American Library Association Black Caucus Nonfiction Award. She has been a research fellow in medical ethics at Harvard Medical School, a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University, and the receipient of a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. She lectures in bioethics at Columbia University and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Her books also include A Terrible Thing to Waste and Infectious Madness.
Related to Medical Apartheid
Related audiobooks
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJust Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAngry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Slave Ship: A Human History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don't) Say About Human Difference Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Buried in the Bitter Waters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
African American History For You
Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No Sweeter Sound: The History of Black Country Music Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism 2nd Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Invisible Generals: Rediscovering Family Legacy, and a Quest to Honor America's First Black Generals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cross and the Lynching Tree Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mis-Education of the Negro Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Never Caught Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Juneteenth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Speeches by Malcolm X, 1925-1965: The Ultimate Collection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Saying It Loud: 1966—The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Medical Apartheid
164 ratings15 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book by Harriet J. Washington is very well researched. It is also a text that has taken be a long time to get through as I could only read 1 chapter at a time - then I needed to internalized and come to grips with the information and truths each chapter contained. I was truly and deeply affected by the unethical behaviors, lack of both truth and informed consent , coercion to care. As I read this, I also thought of the "Radium Girls" as both contained multiplicities of coverups. I salute Harriet Washington for her work as an ethicist and for opening my eyes to realities of medical apartheid that was present then and unfortunately is still with us today. That must be changed and this book is the perfect catalyst to action. While a difficult read, this is a MUST READ!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book! It’s really shocking to know what black people have suffered.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Incredibly eye-opening and heartbreaking. Harriet Washington asks us to confront the medical atrocities of America's past and brings a measured hope and pragmaticism for medical research going forward.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I discovered so much more about the medical system that persist. This book was so chilling.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brilliantly researched and written, chilling in its content .A must read .
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I really appreciated learning about the contents in this book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of the best books I have read and the author really did her homework.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A necessity read! This book is very informative about the disturbing history of medical practices, principles amd theories in American history. You have to really try hard and not become enraged at how they did us as a people, and even more than that, what they believed (and still believe) about us. I dedicate this review to the Carver Village residents of Savannah, GA.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What an eye-opening book. I discovered things in here that I had not known for the last 42 years of my life. I loved the book and think it is an absolute must-read!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing and very important information and history every human should know. Everyone should read this. Not a big fan of the writing style of the author, but kudos for the amazing research and putting this together. Worth it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The history in this book is so shocking and thought-provoking, and now that we are in the middle of COVID-19, I would love to see an updated version dealing with the inequality around this pandemic.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5After reading medical history for a few years I have become accustomed to the fact that until about 200 years ago physicians offered nothing more than comfort and false hope. Thanks to Harriet Washington’s book, “Medical apartheid : the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present“ I realized that many patients, even today, are still only offered false hope in spite of effective treatments being available and that their comfort, their health, is considered irrelevant against the quest for gain. As soon as scientific methods allowed for the development of effective treatments people with no power to resist became the unwilling, and often unknowing, test subjects in the competition for personal and corporate profits. Hopefully this book will do for medical research what the Rodney King video did for law enforcement.I came to read this book for my research into early 19th century medical training. It helped me document what I suspected, anatomy classes dissected primarily black bodies. Hundreds of black bodies being robbed of their eternal slumber was as ineffective then at grabbing the attention of legislatures and law enforcement as hundreds of black bodies being gunned down in our streets is today. Having grown up in the United States I knew what to expect from the popular opinion of the WASP majority. I did not expect the persistent ignorance that is racism to be practiced by educated physicians .Washington’s writing and research are excellent although I do have a few very minor problems with the book. When discussing the ethnic imbalance in medical studies Washington mentions a study with majority African American subjects in a majority African American city. Isn’t proportional representation what we should strive for? Perhaps there was another flaw in that study’s methodology but I did not see it mentioned in the text. When discussing African American’s over representation as subjects in prison studies the passing mention of the fact that African Americans are proportionately over represented in the prison population compared to the general population seemed to me to be understated . Although the over incarceration of minority citizens is outside the focus of the book I felt that the double discrimination could have been emphasized a bit more.Although I feel that Washington’s professional detachment wavered during the examination of forced sterilization I am in awe of her ability to, over all, maintain her professionalism. Reading this book affected me more than any other work I can remember reading. As I said, I expected racial bigotry to be shown in antebellum selection of subjects for medical school dissection, but I was shocked at how much farther it went. I naively expected that post Mengele, post Nuremberg, post AMA, NIH and CDC ethics standards the intentional targeting of minorities and the poor would have diminished. It did not. For some reason I expected better of educated “healers”. I feel the need to go and reread John Dittmer’s “The Good Doctors” in the hope that it will restore some of my faith in the medical profession.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is such a grim book that it took me a rather long time to get through. Harriet Washington has researched the history of medical studies using people of African origin or descent from slavery times through the present. It appears to be thoroughly researched and well documented. Washington cites a need for honesty in dealing with the issue for the sake of current research efforts with African Americans -- who appear reluctant to serve as medical research subjects in even legitimate and ethical studies. She argues that such reluctance is not just fallout from the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, as many white people claim, but is the result of a long-standing pattern of medical abuses toward subjects with dark skin.Many -- no most -- of the stories here are truly ugly, the abuses blatant and obvious, the racial bias clear. Those are the most powerful (and upsetting) stories. Then there are those situations where the abuse or the bias is more subtle. In a few cases, Washington seems to tiptoe on the borders of working both sides of the issue re: the need for participation vs. the appropriateness of the studies. While this sometimes illustrated the difficulty of conducting truly fair and ethical experiments, sometimes it appeared to this reader that the author was pushing the issue in cases where the ethics were ambiguous at worst -- for instance, terminally ill prisoners who consented to highly risky procedures because they knew they would be dead in a few weeks barring a true medical miracle. Inclusion of such cases hardly seemed necessary, as there was more than enough obviously unethical material to make her point.This is not at all a pleasant book to read, but it is a real eye-opener.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a sweeping account of the long, tragic history of the abuse of African Americans in medical research. The shocking nature of the abuses described in this book, along with the sheer quantity of them, is nearly overwhelming. But Washington does much more than merely shock the reader; she helps us to understand why the black community has been so distrustful of medicine and the health care system -- which tragically worsens the health disparities between blacks and whites -- and argues that restoring that trust must begin with an honest accounting of the wrongs that have been done. The one major criticism I have of the book is, in describing some of the more recent episodes, its tendency to understate the role of socioeconomic class discrimination in order to continue pressing the issue of race. To be sure, class discrimination has meant that blacks have been overrepresented, there is a meaningful distinction to make between medical abuses motivated by racism and/or racist medical theory, and medical abuses that disproportionately affect blacks by taking advantage of the vulnerability of people in poverty. But this is a relatively small criticism of what is a powerful and important book that should be read by anyone concerned with social justice and ethical research.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A very interesting book. It can get a little dry in places, but that is to be expected from a medical history book and is more than made up for by the way the book sheds light on little known corners of history. I opened this book expecting the bulk of it to deal with the well-known Tuskegee Syphillis experiment, but as the book itself points out this was just the tip of the ice-burg of medical experimentation in America. A fascinating and worth-while read.