Harriet Washington Medical Apartheid Summary

Harriet Washington’s Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to Present’s introduces the mistreatment of African Americans in the medical system and the use of their bodies for advances in medicine. In some scenarios, African Americans did not even benefit from the medical breakthroughs which was the effect of research extracted from their bodies. Washington provides several historical and current events of how the black body was unethically used for medical experimentation to support her thesis. The work of gynecologist J. Marion Sims and Washington’s contrast of medical files of a black male and a white male are just two examples discussed in the introduction of Medical Apartheid.
J. Marion Sims is noted as the “father of gynecology” for his discoveries on health complications specifically in women. Sims inventions of gynecological instruments and procedures were at the expense of African American female slaves. Sims …show more content…
Washington notes finding the medical folders of two patients from the 1970s in a teaching hospital in upstate New York. The two patients, both male, only differed in race, suffering from the same medical problem, imminent kidney failure. The folder containing the medical details of the white man showed a necessary kidney transplant as treatment. “The social history stressed his loving family and determination to live.” (Washington 14) On the other hand, the file of the “negro” male emphasized his race on every page. As treatment, the file did not state transplant like his white counterpart; medical staff only intended to “help him to ‘prepare for his imminent demise’”. (Washington 14) This event noted in the book is a clear depiction of how race determined important medical treatment that could lead to life or