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

by Harriet A. Washington

Subjects are often identified not as black but, using coded references, as “the urban poor,” “socio-economically disadvantaged,” or “inner-city residents.” This episodic approach treats the exploitation of black experimental subjects as isolated events, so that even while the repeated reports buttress widespread distrust of medical research,

research? Until now, the discussion has suffered greatly from our Western literary bias, which encourages us to believe planters’ and physicians’ writings about the health and medical issues of African Americans, but to give insufficient weight to a rich oral history passed down by African Americans, a history that has preserved the memory of medical abuses.

historically, most perpetrators of ethically troubling experiments utilizing African Americans have been overachieving adepts with sterling reputations, impressive credentials, and social skills sufficient to secure positions of great responsibility.

“So little trouble do men take in search for the truth,” Thucydides once observed, “so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand.” The behavior of the U.S. intellectual elite validated his centuries-old lament.

This tendency to see environmentally and socially triggered illnesses as inherent defects of blacks is a troublingly persistent trend in American medical research.

Sometimes the ethnic element lurks below the ideological surface, but U.S. groups with frankly racial political agendas19 often mount baldly racial attacks. The chief aims of today’s violent cults are not only political and social fanaticism but also genocide.20