unethical medical practices & POC
Today I lead a class discussion on unethical medical practices. The class had to read two articles: (1) on the 7 criteria for ethical research (which I thought was great, but never practiced) and (2) on the possibility of coercing American patients (the article implicitly spoke to middle class white people) to be tested… which was interesting, because those are exactly the people who have never been used as human subjects.
I brought in 2 historical examples of unethical medical treatment. One being J. Marion Sims (the father of gynecology) who tested tons of black female slaves… without anesthesia (because he thought black women didn’t feel pain… wow… how intelligent) but he’s responsible for what we know about the female reproductive system.
& the Tuskegee syphilis experiment… where 400 black men thought they were being treated for their disease but were really just being observed while they died and passed it on to their wives (lasted 40 years.. 1932-1972)
Because I figured my white class would not know about these things. Since when we speak of unethical medical treatment it usually begins and ends with the Nuremberg trials (Nazi Germany).
Anyway, being the person I am, one of the questions I asked everybody to respond to is if they believe unethical medical treatment is symptomatic of society’s willigness to exploit marginalized groups.
(obviously, that’s what I think)
But most of the white people didn’t. There was a lot of emphasis placed on the established rules for ethical research (like they’re ever followed) & a lot of emphasis on “well, humans have to be tested!”
true
but this reality is certainly different in my POV as a lower class black women… most of the testing has been done on my demographic.
it’s really interesting to see how white people rationalize violence against PoC.
“well it has to be somebody!” and then they’ll try to say that it’s because they happen to be poor or un-educated or etc etc
and first of all, all of those predicaments are strongly correlated to race but ALSO it is so easy for white people to do the Kanye shrug when it’s not white people who are effected
one white guy in the class brought up how research is supervised and unbiased people decide if it’s ethical
and I’m just imagining a whole bunch of old white guys (say supervising Planned Parenthood’s research) and thinking in their heads of the poor black women who are to be tested
if whites show no sympathy on a jury for a criminal law case, why would they show sympathy in medical research?
hm.
^ very interesting. And sad.
