Harriet A. Washington Book order

The narrative explores the alarming decline of Americans' right to refuse risky medical research, particularly in the context of urgent vaccine development during the Covid-19 pandemic. It traces the origins of this erosion back to a 1990 FDA waiver allowing nonconsensual testing of an anthrax vaccine on military personnel. Since then, over 20,000 civilians have been subjected to similar practices under the guise of research. Legal modifications in 1996 have further enabled such unethical studies, revealing a troubling trend in the U.S. medical-research system's trustworthiness.

A powerful indictment of the notion of hereditary intelligence, A Terrible Thing to Waste shows how environmental racism drives the black-white IQ gap and explains what can be done to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities.

A groundbreaking look at the connection between germs and mental illness, and how we can protect ourselves.

The first comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between Africans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the way both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without a hint of informed consent--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and a view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. New details about the government's Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, and private institutions. This book reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of theAfrican American health deficit.--From publisher description