Medical Apartheid Definition

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.

Medical Apartheid Harriet Washington

The Tuskegee Experiment was a study that began in 1932; Investigators enrolled in the study 399 impoverished African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Ala.

Get quality help now

KarrieWrites

Verified

Proficient in: Medicine

5 (339)

“ KarrieWrites did such a phenomenal job on this assignment! He completed it prior to its deadline and was thorough and informative. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

, 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 “bad blood,” a local term used to describe several illnesses, including syphilis, anemia and fatigue.

The 40-year study was controversial for reasons related to ethical standards, primarily because researchers failed to treat patients appropriately after the 1940s validation of penicillin as an effective cure for the disease. Revelation of study failures led to major changes in U. S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies. Now studies require informed consent, communication of diagnosis, and accurate reporting of test results. Harriet A. Washington made it her priority to in form about what was happening in the past.

Things we already knew but were too afraid to ask or think about because we thought we’d be next. It was something that could’ve been stopped if only you had that one person to step up, and speak out o what was going on, instead of living their lives in fear and then having to live with the fact that someone is dead or either dying because you’re too selfish and scared to save them and a whole bunch of other people. Harriet Washington gave us this information, to inform us, about the many things that happened on the low that we didn’t know about.