Medical Apartheid

In this study of race, medicine, and history, Harriet A. Washington provides an in-depth account of three centuries of medical experimentation on African Americans by the medical community, and the ideas that lay behind it all. Carried out without the knowledge or consent of the subjects, this so-called research was legitimized as "scientific" inquiry into intelligence, sexuality, psychology, criminality, disease, and other topics. Often the experiments caused great harm and suffering, both physically and mentally. The most famous of these was the Tuskegee study, for which Washington provides new information, but in MEDICAL APARTHEID, she makes us aware that this brutality was more pervasive than is commonly known; that it occurred in prisons, hospitals, the military, and other institutions; and that it was often sanctioned by the government. MEDICAL APARTHEID won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle award in General Nonfiction.