Mr Jatta, the Rev is right in his pronouncement but the way he deliver the message was very strong. but in all honesty he echo what many have in mind. so sad. obama is just another politician ,refusing to getting dirty in the mud.
Lamin Jatta <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Mr. Buharry this is a indeed very disturbing. Probably putting this claims into perspective one can understand why Rev. Wright is stubbornly out on the rampage against the Obama campaign.
Lamin
Momodou Buharry Gassama wrote: Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black
Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
by Harriet Washington
Unequal Treatment: How African Americans Have Often Been the Unwitting
Victims of Medical Experiments
A Review by Alondra Nelson
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study remains an ignominious milestone in the
intertwined histories of race and medical science in U.S. society.
Initiated in 1932, this tragic 40-year long public health project
resulted in almost 400 impoverished and unwitting African American men
in Macon County, Ala., being left untreated for syphilis. Researchers
wanted to observe how the disease progressed differently in blacks in
its late stages and to examine its devastating effects with postmortem
dissection.
A fresh account of the Tuskegee study, including new information about
the internal politics of the panel charged by the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare with investigating it in 1972, lies at the center
of Harriet A. Washington's courageous and poignant book. The balance of
Medical Apartheid reveals, with arresting detail, that this scandal was
neither the first chapter nor the last in the exploitation of black
subjects in U.S. medical research. Tuskegee was, in the author's words,
"the longest and most infamous -- but hardly the worst -- experimental
abuse of African Americans. It has been eclipsed in both numbers and
egregiousness by other abusive medical studies."
Although medical experimentation with human subjects has historically
involved vulnerable groups, including children, the poor and the
institutionalized, Washington enumerates how black Americans have
disproportionately borne the burden of the most invasive, inhumane and
perilous medical investigations, from the era of slavery to the present
day. (This burden has become global in the last few decades.) In 1855,
John "Fed" Brown, an escaped slave, recalled that the doctor to whom he
was indentured produced painful blisters on his body in order to
observe "how deep my black skin went." This study had no therapeutic
value. Rather, fascination with the outward appearance of African
Americans, whose differences from whites were thought to be more than
skin deep, was a significant impulse driving such medical trials.
Shielding whites from excruciating experimental procedures also proved
a powerful motivation. J. Marion Sims, a leading 19th-century physician
and former president of the American Medical Association, developed
many of his gynecological treatments through experiments on slave women
who were not granted the comfort of anesthesia. Sims's legacy is Janus-
faced; he was pitiless with non-consenting research subjects, yet he
was among the first doctors of the modern era to emphasize women's
health. Other researchers were more guilty of blind ambition than
racist intent. Several African Americans, including such as Eunice
Rivers, the nurse-steward of the Tuskegee study, served as liaisons
between scientists and research subjects.
The infringement of black Americans' rights to their own bodies in the
name of medical science continued throughout the 20th century. In 1945,
Ebb Cade, an African American trucker being treated for injuries
received in an accident in Tennessee, was surreptitiously placed
without his consent into a radiation experiment sponsored by the U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission. Black Floridians were deliberately exposed to
swarms of mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and other diseases in
experiments conducted by the Army and the CIA in the early 1950s.
Throughout the 1950s and '60s, black inmates at Philadelphia's
Holmesburg Prison were used as research subjects by a University of
Pennsylvania dermatologist testing pharmaceuticals and personal hygiene
products; some of these subjects report pain and disfiguration even
now. During the 1960s and '70s, black boys were subjected to sometimes
paralyzing neurosurgery by a University of Mississippi researcher who
believed brain pathology to be the root of the children's supposed
hyperactive behavior. In the 1990s, African American youths in New York
were injected with Fenfluramine -- half of the deadly, discontinued
weight loss drug Fen-Phen -- by Columbia researchers investigating a
hypothesis about the genetic origins of violence.
Washington's litany of experimental misdeeds done to African Americans
is more extensive than can be described here. With such damning
evidence, one wonders why she felt it necessary to include examples
that, while clearly offensive, do not rise to the threshold of medical
experimentation. For instance, supporters of slavery, to justify the
peculiar institution, cited data from the 1840 census showing that free
African Americans had poorer mental and physical health than enslaved
blacks. Nonetheless, taking ideological liberties with questionable
statistics is not, in and of itself, an example of medical
experimentation, nor was circus impresario P.T. Barnum's display of
black Americans as entertainment. While demonstrating the widespread
exploitation of blacks, it confuses the thrust of Washington's
argument.
But Washington also sheds light on how our understanding of what
constitutes medical research requires broadening in the face of new
developments in genetic science. Federal and state forensic DNA
databases contain a disproportionate number of samples from African
Americans, for example. Because genetic samples collected for this
purpose carry information about a subject's health, blacks are
particularly vulnerable to the exposure of sensitive medical
information. And although experimentation with human subjects is less
invasive than it once was, Washington cautions that it is no less
injurious. Researchers still need to be mindful of the rights of their
subjects.
Given the history presented in Medical Apartheid, it is no surprise
that some African Americans continue to regard the medical system with
apprehension, despite more stringent safeguards enacted by the federal
government in the 1970s. Washington attributes this outlook, which she
calls iatrophobia, to the seeds of distrust sown in black communities
by the Tuskegee scandal and a history of lesser-known mistreatment.
Washington, a visiting fellow at Chicago's DePaul University, intends
that Medical Apartheid serve a socially therapeutic -- if not cathartic
-- function. Laying bare these atrocities, her logic goes, will foster
healing and frank but necessary conversation. Clearing the air may
encourage a better informed African American public to participate in
clinical trials.
Despite the author's best intentions, the scale and persistence of the
"dark history" she delineates may well preclude such a development.
Precisely because Washington's account of racially stratified medical
exploitation is so gripping, it may be difficult for the public to
muster enthusiasm to enter clinical trials, no matter their cultural
background. And with the experimental research burden shifting from
Americans of African descent to Africa itself (which Washington calls a
"continent of subjects"), Asia, and Latin America, where some cavalier
researchers are seeking more plentiful and pliant subjects, readers may
be more convinced than ever of the durability of the medical color
line.
Alondra Nelson, an assistant professor of African American studies and
sociology at Yale University, is writing a book, Body and Soul: The
Black Panther Party and the Politics of Health and Race.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Medical Apartheid in America
By MARGARET KIMBERLY
"There isn't a better candidate for torture than a person who isn't
really considered a person."
The name Josef Mengele is so infamous that it needs no introduction.
Mengele was the German doctor who performed medical experiments on
prisoners at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. An American doctor, James
Marion Sims was equally monstrous, but his name is less well known.
Sims was a doctor who routinely performed unnecessary and sadistic
surgeries on slaves in Alabama. He opened the skulls of babies and
performed gynecological surgeries on women. They were forced to endure
unimaginable treatments, all without the ether that had by then become
available as an anesthetic. Of course, being enslaved people, they had
no choice in any decisions that Sims made about their bodies or their
lives.
Sims allegedly sought to treat vaginal fistulas caused by
complications of child birth. One woman underwent this treatment,
without anesthesia, 30 times. He obviously didn't cure her of
anything.
Because Sims' victims were black Americans their stories remained
largely untold. They were not the first or the last black Americans to
be subjected to what can only be called torture in the name of
scientific investigation. Sims is called "the father of gynecology" and
eventually became president of the American Medical Association. He has
been immortalized in a monument that still stands in New York's Central
Park.
"Sims' victims were not the first or the last black Americans to be
subjected to what can only be called torture in the name of scientific
investigation."
Of course, there has been a memorial to the Jewish Holocaust on the
Washington Mall for more than ten years. There is still no monument to
American slaves who built all of the capitol monuments. Sadistic
torture can be condemned as long as it didn't happen here.
A newly published book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical
Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present,
is a comprehensive chronicle of surgeries performed without anesthesia,
the notorious Tuskegee experiments that prevented 400 men from being
treated for syphilis over a 40 year period, and forced sterilizations.
Harriet Washington, the author of Medical Apartheid, has performed an
invaluable service. White Americans love to point fingers at Germans
who won't apologize for Hitler, or Japanese who claim that the rape of
Nanking didn't take place. There is little interest in acknowledging,
much less apologizing for atrocities that took place on American soil.
History tells us that torture and murder are considered acceptable if
the perpetrators are white and the victims aren't. The population of
American Indians was decimated from an estimated 15 million before
European occupation to 200,000 in 1890. Simply put, they were murdered.
They were shot and scalped and infected with disease. Millions of
Africans taken into slavery in Africa perished before reaching the
western hemisphere where they faced the prospect of being the property
of Dr. Sims and his ilk.
The litany of atrocities documented in Medical Apartheid shocks the
soul and the senses. Yet it must be pointed out that those atrocities
are all logical results of the white supremacy that was manifested in
chattel slavery, and the terror that followed it. There isn't a better
candidate for torture than a person who isn't really considered a
person.
It is indeed valuable that some of the most racist crimes committed in
this country have finally been exposed. But it will be of little use if
this history is dismissed as vestiges of another time instead of
revealing an ideology that has never disappeared from the American
consciousness. The use of black Americans as guinea pigs didn't end
with the slavery era and wasn't confined to the South.
"It is unclear if the children died because of the effects of HIV or
from side effects of the medications they were given."
The same sickness that permitted slaves to be the subject of cruel
experiments puts foster children in the same danger. From 1988 to 2001,
465 children in New York City's foster care system were subjected to
experiments with AZT and other toxic HIV drugs.
The state acting in loco parentis, gave itself permission to test
drugs on children as young as six months of age. Fifteen percent of the
children died, but it is unclear if they died because of the effects of
HIV or from side effects of the medications they were given.
Again in New York City in the 1990s, 100 boys, all African American or
Latino who were diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, were used to test the now banned drug fenfluramine. They were
chosen because they all had older brothers in the juvenile justice
system. The tests were conducted to detect biological markers for "anti-
social" behavior. It is a question never posed about white people, who
are capable of being quite anti-social.
If New York at the end of the 20th century offered the same treatment
as Alabama in the 19th century, then white supremacist ideology, and
medical apartheid, are alive and well. We can add health care to the
long list of items that are ordinarily beneficial but may not be for
people of color. Take a dose of paranoia and call your lawyer in the
morning.
Margaret Kimberley is an editor and senior columnist for the Black
Agenda Report. Her Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms.
Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at
Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com. When sending email, please
remember to replace the (at) with @.
------------------------------------------------
いいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいい
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
いいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいい
---------------------------------
Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.
いいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいい
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
いいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいい
いいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいい
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
いいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいいい
|
