Evening with Harriet Washington with “Medical Apartheid”

Harriet Washington comes to Revolution Books to discuss and update her acclaimed book, Medical Apartheid. This book, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, is a groundbreaking history of involuntary and unethical medical experimentation on African Americans from the time of slavery to the present.

“[Washington] begins her shocking history in the colonial period, when owners would hire out or sell slaves to physicians for use as guinea pigs in medical experiments… The most notorious case here may be the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which about 600 syphilitic men were left untreated by the U.S. Public Health Service so it could study the progression of the disease…”
— Kirkus Reviews

 
Harriet Washington writes:
“Twice as many African American babies as babies of other ethnic groups die before their first birthday. One and half times as many African American adults as white adults die every year. Blacks have dramatically higher rates of nearly every cancer, of AIDS, of heart disease, of diabetes, of liver disease, of infectious diseases, and they even suffer from higher rates of accidental death, homicide, and mental illness… But in dissecting this shameful medical apartheid, an important cause is usually neglected: the history of ethically flawed medical experimentation with African Americans….”

HARRIET WASHINGTON is science writer, editor and ethicist. She has been a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and other universities. She is also the author of Infectious Madness and Deadly Monopolies. 

Suggested Donation $5-$10. Sliding Scale.
Your donation supports the Revolution Books Educational Fund which sponsors all events at Revolution Books.