Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

by Harriet A. Washington

Book Overview

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER - The first full history of Black America's shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book.

[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076791547X
• ISBN13: 9780767915472
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

How can people still have this kind of hatred?

This is a book not just for blacks so as to be aware of what the medical field may still do to you at any given time, but for everyone that may visit a physician, surgeon and so on. We must remember that they are not gods, but doctors in practice, they don't know everything. We know our own bodies better than they do and if one isn't ready to listen then we must find ones that will. A pill doesn't make it go away, nor does ignoring the patient or worse yet, because of the color, class, race or religion they have mutilated, purposely given people diseases (HIV, Syphilis, Gonorrhea and so on). When I read this book I was disgusted with the medical field and thus made me do more research before I take any medication, surgery and so on. It makes you wonder what goes through their minds while you are completely under and can do whatever they please, this is not to say that there are not good doctors out here. We will have to just be cautious and do more research.

Frightening Look into the Minds of the Heartless

Harriet Washington has created an extensive investigative body of work that reveals the inhumane treatment of a people unprovenly regarded as less than by those who have proved themselves to be less than. One wonders why God would grant anyone dominion over the earth and all that dwells upon it, but Medical Apartheid indentifies those who take to heart that particular verse and chapter and illustrates how they consider no one and nothing exempt from the horrors of their demonic thinking. From surgical procedures with neither consent nor notification to the withholding of treatment for the sake of science, this book reveals the price so many African-Americans have paid in the name of medical advancement-without compensation or an acknowledgment of gratitude from the medical community. This book should be mandatory reading for all. RCP

Medical Aparheid

The facts are disturbing but well documented. Ms. Washington's anaylsis is evenhanded, thorough, and scholarly. I am enjoying the book immensley.