Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsShould be entitled " Exploitation of the Vulnerable Classes"
Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2019
The subject of this book--exploitation of POC is a rather neglected topic as most Americans are unaware of the "sins" of the medical establishment outside of the Tuskegee Experiment . I really wanted to like this book and it piqued my interest in several of these accounts. However, as a scholar and teacher, there are flaws that took away from her work. Several reviewers such as Vox Gabrielus already went into details which I won't repeat. For me , these were my two takeaways :
1. Her main thesis as "Exploitation of Black Americans"---I understood this as a medical experimentation/ exploitation based on race/ racist ideology as the primary reason.
She does this well in her chapters on her a brief history of racist thought, medical treatment under slavery, post slavery. PT Barnum, Sara Baartman, Tuskegee, Cold War bio terrorism, some prison experiments etc. These were SPECIFIC instances when Blacks were targeted/ experimented upon/ fetishized.
When she begins with the chapters on prison experimentation and the radiation trials is where MA loses the tight focus on Black bodies.
Ch 15--Nuclear Winter, she introduces the story of Ebb Cade, the injured truck driver injected with plutonium while at the hospital, and left in hopes the doctors would have a body to dissect and test. To their shock, he walked out in the middle of the night, living another 8 more years. She then declares that "many of these subjects, perhaps most, were African American" (pg 218) She doesn't provide any footnotes to backup the statement. If we overlook that generality, we cannot overlook this: " The percentage of African American subjects in 1945 hovered around 10 percent, but lawyer E. Cooper Brown, who represented plaintiffs in radiation suits, has estimated that '60 percent were people of color, mostly African American' " (pg 219) THERE ARE NO FOOTNOTES or DOCUMENTATION. She must have a footnote to back up such a specific statement. Nor is she clear in her intent--does she mean a recorded 10% of African American subjects in the records of these 1945 studies or 10% of the total population of America in 1945? If she does mean the 1945 studies, to make the statement that these records were false at 10% black participation but that in fact it was 60% black participation implies racist intent on the part of the researchers which requires a source. Where does Brown get this information? Later in the chapter (pg 240) she quotes Brown at 3 of 5 victims were Black---the source? a June 1978 issue of The American Journal of Public Health, but no article title, page number, publisher etc.
In the same chapter, we learn about Elmer Allen, a successful Pullman porter who falls from a train breaking his leg, he subsequently loses his job and while at the UCSF free clinic his leg is shot with plutonium then amputated and sent to Los Alamos. He lived to be 84 years old. After the reader learns of these two horrific stories along with the reiteration of a majority black subjects, she informs the reader that in the plutonium studies " According to a July 1947 statement by Robert Stone [to whom we are introduced previously] "By race there were 15 white and 5 blacks" injected. " She gives us a source for this statement. But we were told for a number of pages that the majority were black....how does she explain this? the rate of 25% participants "was 2.5 times greater than it should have been " given the US population. She gives this explanation on several occasions where the majority of subject were white not black especially in the prison chapter which undermines her thesis on exploitation of BLACK BODIES.
Several of the studies that she tries infer a racist intent are in fact with minority or equal participation by blacks such as 45% percent in the Sloan Kettering Institute cancer cell "research". As well as the irradiation of 131 Oregon prisoners’ gonads which 66 black subjects and 66 white (pg 233) Also on 233, 30 orphans in MA ate radioactive oatmeal "Old videotapes reveal that some of these boys were African American". SOME? why not an actual number? On pg 239, 1940s-50s, NY children in low income areas had their scalps treated by irradiation for ringworm ,the percentage 25% black. Again no source. By including these examples she weakens her thesis and exposes rather the exploitation of vulnerable subjects who are underserved, undereducated, and have few options.
2. Her lack of sources
Some readers commented that it seemed to be well sourced, however as stated above she makes "bombshell" statements and quotes without citations. There should be far more than is given.
Another misleading source on page 264
" On July 29, 1969, the New York Times, published a page one article that exposed Dr Austin Stough's ethically and scientifically sloppy drug testing program, which had crippled and killed unknown numbers of men throughout the state prisons of Alabama [as well as OK and AR]. Unlike the earlier articles, which had praised the experiments, this account suggested that most of his victims were black."
I have personally read the article which is available online, it suggests no such thing. One could INFER that many of his subjects were indeed black in AL given the racial makeup of prisons in the South but the article does not suggest this at all.
In summary, Medical Apartheid is an important read based on it subject matter, BUT its execution is lacking and should be read critically and with reflection.
