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

Harriet A. Washington

Mar 2016 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Ron Butler

About this audiobook

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge-a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism were used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, 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.

Ratings and reviews

Outstanding book and probably the most emotionally wrenching read I've had. Dr. Washington is brilliant and courageous. She is worthy of our praise and deserving of the patience needed to complete this master work.

The audiobook adds to the depth of this classic of population health. Medical Apartheid authoritatively documents the health consequences of America's national policies of racism. It helped me understand why the UN calls American policies 'ethnic cleaning'. I was grieved to conclude that, based on statistical outcomes, America is continuing to commit a slow, chronic form of genocide administered though its healthcare systems.

I have the paper back I have learned where the inferiority complex came from , all the black stigmas, and the beginning of so many blatant lies that has been perpetuated about us from everyone else, very emotional, and yes at times tears wet the pages always mention THERAPUTIC YOUR DOC, (learn) what it means

About the author

Harriet A. Washington has been a fellow in ethics at the Harvard Medical School, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University. She worked in U.S. hospitals for a decade and has been a writer and editor for USA Today.

Ron Butler is a Los Angeles-based actor and voice artist with over a hundred film and television credits (playing everything from brooding doctors to screwball hipsters). Ron works regularly as a commercial and animation voice-over artist and has voiced a wide variety of audiobooks.