Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Author: Washington, Harriet A.

This interesting read got excellent reviews from several library journals. For me, this book brought attention to a part of American History I did not know existed. Here’s a brief summary:

MEDICAL APARTHEID is the first and only comprehensive history of the medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between Africans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the way both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without a hint of informed consent. 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 a view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. 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.

*Come check it out at the Todd Library*