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Overall Summary
In the book Medical Apartheid, author Harriet A. Washington argues that medical experiments have been performed on African Americans for centuries, and this abuse is not limited to a few isolated incidents. The purpose of her book is to expose the long history of exploitation so that it can be corrected by bridging the gap between white and black health profiles in America.
Washington’s goal was achieved when she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction in 2006 for writing this groundbreaking examination of American medicine.
Part 1 of Medical Apartheid focuses on the historic treatment of African Americans. Washington argues that blacks have been unfairly treated by American doctors since the birth of the United States. In Chapter 1, Washington describes the general culture of health care in the Antebellum South, exploring how medical treatment of slaves rested solely in the hands of slaveowners. In order to justify slavery, scientists claimed that black people naturally lacked physical and mental prowess and required supervision from white slaveowners to survive—a set for beliefs known as “scientific racism”. Chapter 2 explores how Southern surgeons develop medical advances through abusive experimentation on slaves. James Marion Sims helps pioneer modern gynecology by repeatedly operating on a group female slaves without consent or anesthetics. In Chapter 3, Washington focuses on sideshow exhibitions of black people arguing that such displays help popularize theories about scientific racism.
Chapter 4 examines eugenics, a movement based upon hereditarianism which seeks to improve humanity through selective breeding. Eugenics relies heavily upon scientific racism and is often supported by major American thinkers like Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, John Harvey Kellogg, George Eastman, Charles Benedict Davenport, Madison Grant and Harry Houdini. As part of his argument against eugenics, Washington highlights its role in influencing Nazi practices during World War II…
In the 19th century, many doctors learned how to operate by practicing on black bodies. Black cadavers were also used for dissections and autopsies. This was because in some places, it was illegal to dissect white bodies without a license from the state medical board. In addition, poor blacks who died of syphilis were often used as subjects for studies without their consent or knowledge that they had syphilis. The author argues that these are not isolated events but rather part of a continuous pattern of neglecting black people’s health issues by the medical establishment.
In part 2, Washington focuses on various 20th-century instances of abuse. She groups them around “vulnerable subjects”, such as children and prisoners. Chapter 8 discusses the history of birth control programs that targeted African Americans due to racist beliefs about their genetic inferiority. In Chapter 9, Washington describes a number of radiation experiments performed upon black bodies without their patients’ knowledge. Similarly, in chapter 10’s discussion of prison experiments, she focuses on how prisoners were manipulated into agreeing to be research subjects despite not knowing what they were getting themselves into. Finally, chapter 11 focuses on experiments on black children who are portrayed as naturally aggressive criminals when young.
Washington uses Part 3 to describe how cutting-edge medical developments may impact African Americans. DNA testing has freed many black people who were falsely imprisoned, but Washington notes that the growth of governmental genetic databases may grant police new means to unfairly target black people. Medical devices such as artificial hearts and blood are tested on black subjects, even though they can’t afford them when they’re approved for the marketplace. Finally, Washington explores the history of bioterrorism targeting blacks, from apartheid South Africa’s attempts to create a biological weapon that only affects blacks to America’s MK-NAOIMI program in which Africans were infected with diseases like Marburg virus without their knowledge or consent.
