Unequal Treatment: How African Americans Have Often Been the Unwitting Victims of Medical Experiments
Posted by Review-a-Day, February 9, 2007 12:00 am 1 Comment Filed under: Review-a-Day. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
Reviewed by Alondra Nelson
Washington Post Book World
"The Tuskegee Syphilis Study remains an ignominious milestone in the intertwined histories of race and medical science in U.S. society. Initiated in 1932, this tragic 40-year long public health project resulted in almost 400 impoverished and unwitting African American men in Macon County, Ala., being left untreated for syphilis. Researchers wanted to observe how the disease progressed differently in blacks in its late stages and to examine its devastating effects with postmortem dissection...." Read the entire Washington Post Book World review.
Re your book review of Medical Apartheid, by Harriett A. Washington.
Just happened to see critique by Alondra Nelson, who noted that, considering Washington's data on medical abuse, she (Nelson)did not see the relevance of including P.T. Barnum's parading of the African American woman purported to George Washington's "Mammy."
The follow caption accompanies the photo of the woman and indicates relevance, at least to the one(s)without voice and who are exploited "by physicians and laypersons."
"An 1835 flyer announces the appearance of Joice Heth, the purported 161-year-old "mammy" of President George Washington. Heth was regularly examined by physicians and laypersons alike." (Somers Historical Society and Museum)