[EMAIL PROTECTED] Harriet Washington was interviewed many times on various programs on WBAI - listener-sponsored, non-commercial radio and on democracynow,org. She has written a very valuable and important book exposing just how evil racism can be. Amy
*Brutal Case Studies * /A new book documents a true ethics horror story./ By Allison Samuels Newsweek Feb. 12, 2007 issue - When Harriet Washington, a med-school graduate and former fellow in ethics at Harvard Medical School, decided to research medical crimes against African-Americans, she feared she'd turn up much more than the Tuskegee experiment. She was right. Washington's new book, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present," reveals that the 40-year Tuskegee study—which allowed black men with syphilis to die untreated so their cadavers could be used for research—was neither the first nor the last time that unwitting black subjects were exploited by medical researchers in the United States. "Tuskegee is just the most well-known example," says Washington, currently a visiting scholar at DePaul Law School. "Medical Apartheid" starts with the chilling story of John (Fed) Brown, an escaped slave in 1855 who recalled his owner, a doctor, causing blisters on his arms and legs to see "how deep his black skin went." The study, if that's the word for it, had no therapeutic value. It reflected a distorted fascination with the outward appearance of African-Americans at a time when racial differences were thought to be much more than skin deep. "One thing that surprised me," Washington told NEWSWEEK, "was the brutal honesty of the doctors' notes. There was no hiding their racist views. They made it clear how they felt about African-Americans and saw no problem with what they were doing. They were proud to write it down." But "Apartheid's" tales are not limited to the politically incorrect past. The forced sterilization of black women (what civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer called her "Mississippi appendectomy") got its start during slavery, but continued in less overt forms until recent years. A 1991 experiment that implanted the now defunct birth-control device Norplant into uninformed African-American teenagers in Baltimore was applauded by some as a way to "reduce the underclass." Tragic Legacy: A black prisoner wears skin patches during a drug experiment at a prison in Pennsylvania in 1966 Courtesy Temple University Urban Archives Tragic Legacy: A black prisoner wears skin patches during a drug experiment at a prison in Pennsylvania in 1966 But perhaps the most egregious case Washington documents involved a study conducted in New York from 1988 to 2001, in which a city agency tested potentially dangerous AIDS drugs on African-American foster children with HIV, often without permission of their parents. The children were 6 months of age and younger. "Eighty percent of the children in foster care in New York are black," says Washington, "and many of them have parents who aren't available to them because of drugs or whatever. They're perfect victims." Washington also highlights the dual face of abuse, how many medical advances resulted from unethical research. J. Marion Sims, a leading 19th-century physician, president of the American Medical Association and one of the first doctors to emphasize women's health, developed many of his gynecological treatments through experiments on nonconsenting slave women who were denied the comfort of anesthesia. Thanks to this brutal history, many African-Americans today are wary of participating in potentially lifesaving medical studies. "That's really the true cost of all of these abusive practices," says Washington. "Because of past crimes against our health, we're too afraid to trust those in authority." A recent study in The American Journal of Law & Medicine estimated that only 1 percent of the nearly 20 million Americans enrolled in biomedical studies are black. Still, the author sees signs of progress. Many of the medical schools that were guilty of experimenting on African-Americans in the past have agreed to let her lecture to incoming medical classes. "My hope is this opens a door to conversation," says Washington. "By bringing these atrocities out in the public, some healing can occur and some of the fears African-Americans feel will begin to dissolve." Damien Donck for Newsweek ------------------------------------------------------------------------ URL: _http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16960678/site/newsweek/_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stay up-to-date with your friends through the Windows Live™ Spaces friends list. 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