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Affect of slavery on african americans
Effects of slavery on african americans
Affect of slavery on african americans
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Medical research in the United States has a disgraceful history of exploitative studies in which African Americans were targets of abuse in the name of medical and scientific progress. African Americans have been used as the testing ground for drugs, treatments, and procedures since the time of slavery. The tolerance of the human frame and the endurance of the soul have been pushed to the limit in many of these experiments. From the physical demands on plantation work and the torturous treatment of slavery to the mental anguish inflicted on a slave’s soul by their masters, blacks have received deplorable treatment sanctioned by a white society. The end of slavery and the ushering in of the twenty first century did not end the torturous treatment and mental abuse. African Americans have been used for medical experimentation without consent for decades. Ironically they are treated as inferior and often given fewer rights than others, but amazingly their cells and bodies are treated as equals in laboratories for medical research, the results of which can save, extend and enhance the lives of others. Although color lines that are drawn in many aspects of life and inequitable treatment doled out based on the depth of the color of one’s skin, actually astounding results from medical experimentation on African Americans has produced drugs, cures and treatments for even those who do not value people of color, leaving the question of ethics and equity hanging in the balance. What motivated some studies on blacks in particular during the early to mid-1900 was the idea that diseases are different within different races (Geiger). Paradoxically many of the studies that were done were not for this purpose but for the advancement of medicine to... ... middle of paper ... ...a hospital." 3 April 2010. the guardian. Web. 3 April 2012. . Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Like of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Random House, Inc., 2010. Print. Taylor, Erica. "Little-Known Black History Fact:A Tuskegee Experiment Update." 3 March 2011. Black America Web. Web. 2 April 2012. . Yu, Edward. "Tuskegee Syphilis Study." 12 November 2008. The Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science. Web. 2 April 2012. . Zaitchik, Alexander. "First, do no harm (towhites)." 31 December 2006. San Francisco Chronicle. Web. 2 April 2012. .
Smedley, B. D. (2012). The Lived Experience of Race and Its Health Consequences. The Science of Research on Racial/Ethnic Discrimination and Health, 102(May), 933.
Dictionary of American Negro Biogarphy, ed. Rayford W. Logan, (New York: W.W. Norton and Co.)369-371
Joseph Nogee, “The Prigg Case and Fugitive Slavery,” The Journal of Negro History 39 (Jul.,
According to the Belmont Report (1979), justice is relevant to the selection of subjects of research at two levels: the social and the individual. Skloot (2010) describes how “Gey took any cells he could get his hands on” and how “TeLinde began collecting samples from any woman who walked into Hopkins with cervical cancer” (p. 30). These two doctors did not exhibit fairness in their selection of subjects. Dr. TeLinde was collecting samples from women on the color ward and did not consider the appropriateness of placing further burdens on already burdened persons. The women whose tissue samples are being gathered for research are the women who will most likely be the last to benefit; because more advantaged populations (wealthy and white) will initially be the primary
Dressler, W. W. (1993). Health in the african american community: Accounting for health inequalities. Medical anthropology quarterly, 7(4), 325-345.
Health Disparities and Racism is an ongoing problem that is reflected among society. Health is when an individual is physically, mentally and social well being is complete. However health disparities seems to be a social injustice within various ethnicities. Health disparities range from age, race, income, education and many other things. Even though we realize health disparities are more noticeable depending on the region of country where they live in. Racism is one of the most popular factors, for why it’s known that people struggle with health.
Studies have analyzed how African Americans deal with an enormous amount of disease, injury, death, and disability compared to other ethnic group, and whites, Utilization of health services by African Americans is less frequent than other ethnic groups in the country. This non utilization of services contributes to health disparities amongst African Americans in the United States. Current and past studies have shown that because of discrimination, medical mistrust, racial/ethnic background, and poor communication African Americans tend to not seek medical care unless they are in dire need or forced to seek professional care. African Americans would rather self –medicate than to trust a doctor who might show some type of discriminatory
In recent discussions of health care disparities, a controversial issue has been whether racism is the cause of health care disparities or not. On one hand, some argue that racism is a serious problem in the health care system. From this perspective, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) states that there is a big gap between the health care quality received by minorities, and the quality of health care received by non-minorities, and the reason is due to racism. On the other hand, however, others argue that health care disparities are not due to racism. In the words of Sally Satel, one of this view’s main proponents, “White and black patients, on average don’t even visit the same population of physicians” (Satel 1), hence this reduces the chances of racism being the cause of health care disparities. According to this view, racism is not a serious problem in the health care system. In sum, then, the issue is whether racism is a major cause of health care disparities as the Institute of Medicine argues or racism is not really an issue in the health care system as suggested by Sally Satel.
For instance, many were chronically unemployed or unpaid, lived in unbearable conditions in shacks, exposed to malnutrition, and had severe health diseases, which include tuberculosis, syphilis, hookworm, pellagra, and high death rate (Jones, Bad blood: The Tuskegee syphilis experiment, 1993). According to Jones (2008), “Syphilis is a highly contagious disease caused by the Treponema pallidum, a delicate bacterium that is microscopic in size and resembles a corkscrew in shape. Three stages mark the development of the disease: primary, secondary, and tertiary” (p. 2). In the author’s book, it identified the struggles that African Americans faced on a daily basis. For instance, the author revealed the most prominent time of history was during the Great Depression, Progressive era and other eras. This population in particular had limited access to health care. Only a few of this population had access to adequate medical care; however, majority of them never saw a physician. In fact, the African American physicians were limited, but the whites refused to treat or provide services. During the 1930s, the Depression Era was one of the eras that had the greatest impact on this population. This is the time when whites dominated the United States, exploitation with racism, poverty, and health care was a fee for services, making it
Race-based medicine is not meant to divide people, but rather to give better medical help to people of a certain demographic. Race-based medicine is created based on knowledge of predispositions of any given race. For example, it is a fact that heart disease is the leading cause of death for racial groups including African-Americans, Hispanics, and whites in the United States. When medical experts have this knowledge, the process of making diagnoses is
Bad blood is a book that was written James H. Jones who is an associate professor of History. The book narrates on how the government through the department of Public Health service (PHS) authorized and financed a program that did not protect human values and rights. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment which was conducted between 1932 and 1972 where four hundred illiterate and semi-illiterate black sharecroppers in Alabama recently diagnosed with syphilis were sampled for an experiment that was funded by the U.S Health Service to prove that the effect of untreated syphilis are different in blacks as opposed to whites. The blacks in Macon County, Alabama were turned into laboratory animals without their knowledge and the purpose of the experiment
Williams, D. R., & Jackson, P. (2014, April 1). Health Affairs. Social Sources Of Racial Disparities In Health. Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/24/2/325.short
Today’s society protects against discrimination through laws, which have been passed to protect minorities. The persons in a minority can be defined as “a group having little power or representation relative to other groups within a society” (The Free Dictionary). It is not ethical for any person to discriminate based on race or ethnicity in a medical situation, whether it takes place in the private settings of someone’s home or in a public hospital. Racial discrimination, in a medical setting, is not ethical on the grounds of legal statues, moral teachings, and social standings.
In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many characters must adjust to the face of adversity to better their
11) Washington, Harriet A. Medical apartheid: The dark history of medica experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. Random House LLC, 2006.