A Study in Medical and Scientific Racism In America

the science in the humanities kind of operate in isolation and that there's not necessarily an integration of you know like medical school like you know hard sciences whatever and they're not necessarily taking courses in the humanities that discuss these types of issues and so if people are being educated in these fields and their professors aren't you know well-versed in these issues the students are becoming well-versed in those issues then the next generation of you know scholars are not going to be well-versed in those issues so today's topic is the history of scientific and medical racism in America and a brief description of the talk so from the experiments conducted on enslaved black woman by J Marion Sims to the Tuskegee syphilis study to the creation of phrenology American medical institutions conducted unethical medical practices and created racist pseudo scientific ideas that impacted black American communities for hundreds of years today numerous studies have revealed that there are pernicious racial biases that persist in medicine impacting the quality of care that healthcare providers administer to black Americans and contributing to the large disparity between health outcomes for black and white patients in this country even when controlled for wealth education insurance status and other access related factors black Americans as well as other racial and ethnic minorities receive a lower quality of health care so in this talk we like we're really excited to welcome you Dodi rio kwon do she's a PhD student in the history of science department harvard university her research explores the intersection of race in class Public Health Policy social justice and mental and reproductive health in 20 and 21st century American society and her current project right now examines attempts in the 1960's to characterize civil rights protest methods as signs of a neurological disorder by the white scientific medical community and so in today's talk she'll be exploring the historical relationship between medical and scientific institutions and race in American society and so she'll be looking at some case studies from the 19th century to the present and she'll shed light on the ways in which problematic conceptualizations of race have contributed to health disparities among black Americans so please join me in well coming Dora or kwon-do right now thank you so much for those introductions um it truly is a pleasure to be here with you all today the title of my talk is the history of medical and scientific racism in America however before I begin I think it's important to note two things first my talk today does not provide an exhaustive history if I attempted to provide one we would all be sitting here for an extremely long time so what I'm doing my best is to highlight what I believe are some a significant illustrative cases in that history secondly while my presentation focuses exclusively on the impact of scientific and medical racism on black people it is important to note first that many other minority populations and America have been historically marginalized and Exploited by these discourses and secondly that medical and scientific racism is not exclusively an American phenomenon but instead occurs also on a global scale so I'm going to begin by describing three real scenarios and I ask that as you listen to them you think about the common thread that ties them together in the 19th century of physician argues that enslaved Africans who attempt to runaway are suffering from a mental illness in the 20th century thousands of economically disadvantaged and overwhelmingly black women are coerced by federally funded health centers into getting sterilized at the turn of the 21st century the US government considers funding a research project that suggests that primarily black and brown urban youth are genetically predisposed to acts of violence what are these three cases separated by time and subject matter have in common all three are part of a long tradition of scientific and medical racism in the United States a tradition that has relied on ideas of race more specifically racial difference in order to privilege some racial groups at the expense of marginalizing others such as black Americans scientific racism describes attempts to co-opt the authority of science in order to justify racial prejudice racial discrimination and notions of racial superiority or inferiority medical racism can be viewed as a consequence of racism and refers to prejudice and discrimination and medicine and the healthcare system based upon individuals race central to both scientific and medical racism is the legitimization of race as a category that can indicate the inherent inferiority or superiority of a particular group race is a product of culture and human imagination or in other words it is socially constructed when we identify and label people as a particular race we're referring to groups of humans separated by artificial boundaries so sets shared physical characteristics or social qualities that can change depending on time geographies and socio-political context however just because race itself is an unstable constructed category that does not mean that its impact is not real in fact the construction of racial identities has historically been imposed by dominating groups to maintain unequal power dynamics and reinforce the oppression of the historically marginalized we see the persistence of this trend as we examine the relationship between scientific and medical institutions race and the exploitation and marginalization of black Americans throughout American history throughout the 18th century physicians and scientists in Europe and the United States discussed and attempted to define racial differences largely an attempt to justify the existence of slavery in the Americas the colonial system and global imperialism what is surprising is that the origins of this scientific and medical discourse is rooted in manipulations to Christian theology as a means to understand the origins of man during this period physicians and scientists were plagued by whether or not all humans were descendants of Adam and Eve from this question stem to dominant schools of thoughts mono Genesis and polygenesis both of which reinforced the idea that black people were savages and racially intellectually and physically inferior monogenesis theory argues that all humans were descended from Adam and Eve and descended again from Noah and his sons following the great flood however physicians and scientists explain differences between the races based on the unequal distribution of sin after the lineage of ham one of Noah's sons was cursed according to the book of Genesis hams lineage was cursed because he walked in on his father drunk and enclosed after Noah found out about hams transgression he told him that he would curse the lineage of ham son Canaan destiny them to a life of enslavement meanwhile he blessed the lineage of his other sons Japheth and Shem while the book of Genesis never says that ham was black or the races of Noah's other sons the symbol of ham was manipulated so that he became associated with black skin while Japheth and Shem became associated with whiteness thus the curse of ham was used to justify black enslavement and their perceived inferiority since according to their interpretations of the Bible they were morally transgressive people polygenesis on the other hand did not necessarily agree with the curse of ham narrative that is because polygenesis theory argues that the lower races such as black people were not descendants of Adam and Eve or Noah for that matter instead they were an entirely separate species with different lineage lineages for example Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz's argued that black people were created along with other beasts and animals in the Garden of Eden while theoretically different than mono gen ISM polygenism similarly operated to justify the Islamic and oppression of black people by denying them the right to be considered human beings throughout this period attempts were made on both sides to support their theories and racial difference in black inferiority more generally with scientific and anthropological evidence for example the pseudoscience phrenology which attempts to link skull bump measurements to mental traits emerged and was used to justify racist beliefs by comparing skulls of different ethnic groups is supposedly allowed for ranking of races from least to most evolved physicians like Charles Caldwell used phrenology to prove that African people were in their rightful place as slaves because schools suggested a natural timidness that required them to have a master examining schools also played a central role in the development of the American School of Anthropology which was largely rooted in giving scientific authority to pro-slavery forces for example physician Samuel G Morton argued that he could define the intellectual ability of a race by their school capacity he contended that whites had the largest schools while black people had the smallest schools among all races thus making them intellectually inferior and rightfully enslaved this slide depicts images from Morton's crania Americana which was published in 1839 Morton argued that racial differences were actually distinctions between separate species in his drawing on the left you can see that he is suggesting that black people are more similar similar externally and internally to apes thus reinforcing the idea that they are animalistic and mentally and physically inferior his depiction of the white male on the other hand is presented in direct opposition to these images and aimed to suggest they're humanists civilized nature and superiority in reality Morton's depictions are gross misrepresentations and caricatures of real human beings the chart on the right displays detailed recordings of school measurements from the varying races the averages according to Morton demonstrate that black people have the smallest average cranial size other physicians such as Samuel Cartwright came up with a variety of physical and mental conditions that affected slaves if they were granted freedom among them was a condition he called Drake domain iya or the desire to flee servitude Cartwright likened draped amania to a mental disorder similar to madness and argued that slaves should be kept in a submissive State and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away he also argued that slavery was healthy for black people because it gave them discipline and direction sparing them from their innate savagery the proliferation of ideas about black people's biologically-based inferiority left - racist scientific and medical discourses unethical experimentation and exploitation from the medical and scientific establishments during this period and beyond these ideas degraded the humanity of black people robbing them of autonomy and respectful treatment by these institutions the remainder of this talk will highlight a few cases that I think demonstrate the legacy of scientific and medical racism and its impact on black communities so my first case study is going to examine the work of James Marion Sims a 19th century physician who is credited as the father of modern gynecology among his biggest contributions to the field is his development of the speculum which is a tool used for dilation and examination and pioneering a surgical technique to repair vaginal pistil a-- which is a catastrophic complication of childbirth that was common among 19th century woman however Sims contributions did not come without a cost a cost that resulted in the repeated degradation exploitation and abuse of black female slaves who became his unwilling experimental subjects in order to understand the problematic nature of Sims work it is important to understand the relationship between the development of gynecology and the slave trade after Congress banned the importation of African slaves in 1808 American slave owners acquired a more vested interest in increasing the number of slave births in the United States as a result the value of female slaves extended beyond their working capacity on the plantation but their ability to reproduce consequently conditions like vaginal Fisto which compromised female slaves reproductive capacities were considered a huge problem for those invested in the institution of slavery Sims gynecological practice grew directly in response to this need he began experimenting with surgical techniques to treat vaginal fisting in 1845 on black female slaves while during this period anesthesia was experimental physicians were increasingly using it during surgical operations Sims however did not his resistance to anesthesia was not due to speculation of ism its effectiveness but instead was rooted in his racist belief that black people did not feel pain thus slave woman such as an ARCA who was subjected to over 30 experimental operations over the course of four years with subject incredible pain and suffering in order for sims to perfect his technique once perfected Sims began to operate on white woman with anesthesia the case of James Marion Sims demonstrates a clear example of scientific and medical racism as it demonstrates how ideas of racial inferiority turned black woman into expendable exploitable experimental subjects the next case I'll examine the Tuskegee syphilis experiment provides another example of an ethical experimentation on black subjects in 1932 the United States Public Health Service began a study to record the natural history of untreated syphilis in black men in Macon County Alabama what was intended to be a six-month study ended up lasting for 40 years from the start of the experiment researchers engaged in unethical research practices rather than telling them the true purpose of the study participants were told that they were being treated for bad blood a local term used to describe several elements including syphilis anaemia and fatigue bad blood specifically the collection of illnesses the term included was a leading cause of death within the southern african-american community additionally researchers took advantage of the fact that the population they were recruiting impoverished African American sharecroppers had limited to no access to health care and resources thus they lured their participants into the study by promising free medical exams free meals and burial insurance you may be wondering what factors led to Public Health Service researchers to intentionally deceive and exploit their african-american research participants for one researchers at Public Health Service were largely influenced by prevailing cultural and scientific assumptions that shaped ideas about race and disease in fact money public health service researchers receive their medical training when eugenic understandings of race were central to their education thus the meaning of bad blood meant more than just a disease but instead reflected moral and medical inferiority and inordinate sexual appetite - in those afflicted additionally many researchers believe that syphilis disproportionally affected black people as stated by public health service member Raymond a bond earlier our present information indicates definite biological differences in the disease syphilis in Negros and whites there was a dominant belief that this Negro disease would spread to white people thus researchers of the Public Health Service were motivated to fully understand the effects of untreated syphilis on the human body at the time that researchers began the experiment there was no known treatment for syphilis however by the 1940s penicillin became the recommended treatment to cure the disease one would think that the emergence of a cure for syphilis would conclude the study it did not instead the Tuskegee scientists continued the study without treating the patients with penicillin and withheld information about a cure from them Tuskegee researchers made an active choice to complete their goal of tracking the diseases full progression a goal that was pursued without their subjects informed consent even as the men died went blind or insane or experienced other severe health problems due to their untreated syphilis the Tuskegee syphilis experiment highlights the complex and problematic relationship between race and science and provides an example of a clear disregard for black human life in which experimental results are more important than upholding the medical and scientific establishments supposed commitments to do no harm my next case study examines the history of compulsory sterilization and eugenics programs and their effects on the black community compulsory sterilization programs refer to government policies which force people to undergo surgical or other forms of sterilization without their consent that would permanently end their ability to reproduce throughout the 20th century 32 states had federally funded sterilization programs as demonstrated in this slide the first compulsory sterilization programs emerge at the end of the 19th century during the Progressive Era for the purpose of eugenics eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of a human population by controlling reproduction central to eugenics was the idea of biological determinism which argues that physical mental and behavioral defects such as poverty criminality alcoholism and bearing children out of wedlock to be unalterable inheritable traits you jenis were particularly concerned with the cost associated with caring for people with behavioral defects such as these who had financially burden the government and taxpayers thus eugenic thought came to influence politics and social policies through the implementation of involuntary sterilization laws eugenic thought emerged in the United States in response to industrialization urbanization and the mass emigration of eastern and southern Europeans who at the time did not fall into our modern conceptualization of white in response to these changes white native-born Americans became concerned that the unfit would take over the country and thus became motivated to preserve their social economic and political power the targets of eugenic thought however shifted beginning in the 1950s in response to social anxieties including but not limited to demands by the black community for racial equality welfare expansion the creation of anti-poverty programs and increasing mexican and puerto rican immigration while eugenic rhetoric was less explicit compulsory sterilization during this period was still rooted in the belief that social defects were reproduced however the method of transmission shifted from genes to culture among the worst cases of forced sterilization took place in North Carolina at the hands of the state's official eugenics board which was active from 1929 to 1974 and sterilized 7600 people during that time period the board's targets were disproportionately black and female and almost always poor another example of forced sterilization takes place in sunflower County Mississippi where during the 1960's sixty percent of black female residents were sterilized at sunflower city hospital without their permission in both cases physicians felt that they were performing a service to the woman and society at large by sterilizing them without their consent the reality however is that these physicians relied on racialized discourses to justify their actions and dehumanize their victims as aptly stated in 2014 by Margaret Rankin whose sister Deborah was sterilized at 14 years old in the early 1970s by the North Carolina eugenics board they labeled us as poor people uneducated black feeble-minded and thus worthy of sterilization the final case that I'm going to discuss is actually the focus of one of my own research projects which examines attempts by the scientific and medical community to categorize civil rights protests as signs of a neurological disorder in the late 1960s and early 1970s in my work I specifically focused on the claims put forth by three Harvard doctors Vernon Mark William sweet and Frank Ervin and how the government's interest in their work was rooted in attempts to suppress political dissent and reinforce black people's status as second-class citizens in order to understand what would lead doctors to make such a claim it is important to understand the social and political context in which their claims arose historians have examined how the 1960s marked increased concerns regarding public and personal safety particularly among white Americans these fears however were not limited to things such as violent crime but extended to rapid social changes such as the civil rights movement the civil rights movement encompass the diversity of protest methods and traditions ranging from civil disobedience to organized protest to full-on riots additionally the movement witness calls for racial solidarity through ideas such as black power and black consciousness these changes however were a source of apprehension according to research conducted by social scientists during this period many white Americans associated strides for black equality with the black domination or contemporary unrest and considered it incomprehensible and intolerable sentiments towards civil rights protests and riots at the stage for the rise of law and order political ideology which calls for stricter and more punitive approaches against crime within this context civil rights protest methods specifically more confrontational ones such as riots were not understood as responses to sustained social political and economic oppression but instead as senseless violent behavior a look through the Congressional record shows politicians describing this behavior as anti up the goal to American values and they also emphasized the supposed victim ization of white Americans as a result of these protest methods these attitudes resulted in an association between civil rights protests and violent criminal behavior reinforcing historical tropes that characterize black people as uncivilized savages prone to anger in my research I argue that doctors mark sweet and Ervin's claims were deeply influenced by these social anxieties and constructions of civil rights protests as senseless violence in 1967 they published an article titled the role of brain disease and riots and urban violence in which they explicitly assert that rioters may be suffering from brain dysfunction they even went on to say that by focusing on the socio-economic contributors to rioting such as poverty slum housing and limited education opportunities society was overlooking the tremendous impact of biological factors on riots mark Ervin and sweets claims reinforced the dominant public and political discourse the civil rights protest was not a legitimate response to oppression but instead was instead was unwarranted and senseless this belief was so pervasive that the United States Justice Department funded doctors mark Ervin and sweets research at one point allocating them five hundred thousand dollars the political nature of their work is exemplified by quote made by Irving himself in 1970 we're really talking about being socially cost-effective if you can work out a way to define diagnose treat and even prevent a problem you're going to save a lot of money that urban rioting and violence in african-american communities came to be understood as the product of a brain disease as the fight for black equality became assertive and unrelenting was not a product of chance the investigation of surgical means for the treatment and prevention of violence was deeply embedded in and influenced by the socio-political context in which it arose arguably the doctors and the political bodies have supported them contributed to the D politicization of the civil rights movement rather than being justified in taking a stand against racist social political and economic policies protesters actions would simply be viewed as the product of having a brain disorder this historical moment reveals the complicated relationship that exists between science and politics and the ways in which this relationship can further marginalize and dehumanize black communities so it would be easy to say that the cases I have described today are mere deviations when we consider the broader historical relationship between scientific and medical institutions and the black community it would be even easier to say that these cases have no bearing on the contemporary relationship between race medicine and science the reality however is that it is not easy the legacy of scientific and medical racism continues to work insidiously today resulting in persistent racial biases in medical practice and scientific investigations it is why scientists continue to investigate as late as the 1990s supposed racial differences in intelligence arguing that black people are genetically predisposed to having lower IQs it is why during the 1990s crack cocaine epidemic policies demonized and criminalized black American drug users rather than humanizing and rehabilitating them rendering their pain and suffering and the socio-political and economic conditions that contributed to drug abuse invisible it is why black mothers are four times more likely to die from childbirth than white woman even when socioeconomic status education and other factors are matched because their physical complaints and concerns during pregnancy are largely ignored it is why black people are less likely to receive treatment for pain than whites because many doctors still hold on to the belief that black people are less likely to feel pain or that if they are given drugs like opioids to treat their pain they will abuse them it is why it is easier for society to blame persistent health disparities in black communities on their own personal choices rather than reflecting on the effects of institutionalized and systemic racism and social political and economic disenfranchisement during the course of my work I often reflect on a quote that is attributed to Mark Twain history does not repeat itself but it does run our historical past has a massive bearing on not only our present but also our future thus history serves as a useful tool to recognize the dangers that can emerge when racial biases science medicine and politics converge rather than promoting equality they can reinforce institutionalized inequality and compromise the health and well-being of the most vulnerable populations my hope is that in examining the historical and contemporary legacies of scientific and medical racism we can build scientific and medical institutions that no longer reinforce racial injustice prejudice and discrimination but instead worked actively to dismantle them thank you so right now we're gonna transition to the Q&A portion of the evening so ah this mic will rotate around the room if you have a question please raise your hand please try to keep your questions brief comment first and then questions if your question out there so we can get as many hear from as many people as possible during this segment of the talk so like looking into the future as personalized medicine becomes more advanced as like genetic testing and like sequencing becomes cheaper and more accessible do you see more of these trends like surfacing or kind of the culture becoming more educated about like these biases and recognizing them and trying to combat that yeah so I definitely sail in recent years has been an increased emphasis on the social determinants of health so things such as where you're raised like economic status education levels and impact on health I think the issue with personalized medicine and genetic testing is if it's happening in isolation from those conversations and if people are still lapsing into this the term I called earlier was biological determinism that our genes is the only thing that can determine our whether or not we get sick and the types of illnesses that we receive so I don't I mean I'm still deciding on my views specifically on genetic testing but I only think it's dangerous if it's used in isolation and that if you're ignoring social determinants of health then that's where you're running into problems because so much of sickness today is an effect of where you live where you're growing up what types whether in a food desert like what type of education receiving like you know things such as that like whether your environment has increased levels of environmental pollution and things such as that things that individuals can't necessarily control and so if we're ignoring on that when we're saying that people are just sick because their genes say they are we're lapsing into racialized discourses that aren't necessarily true and don't paint the full picture how did you come to choose this research as your field and heard what brought you brought into it yeah that's um so I've always I think partially my interest in you know issues of race just kind of stem from my own lived experiences as a black woman who has experienced racism in America so that's one side but then also growing up I wanted to be a doctor but I quickly threw away that dream look I was in college because I hate science and I hate yeah ironically I studied history science and medicine but I hate science like I hate biology I hate chemistry anyways so during my sophomore year of college I took my first history of science class called medical ethics in history and I realized that this that was exactly I wanted to be I'm not necessarily engaging in practice but thinking about the ways in which history and reflecting on our historical past can help us influence and shape the ways in which we have contemporary medical and scientific discourses and so for the girl like me who hates science and you know understands the impact of racism in American society and also was vaguely interested in medicine and health was able to combine those three things together and that's what kind of landed me in a ph.d program and history of science studying these issues oh yeah I wondered if we could go back to the slide of the United States yeah sure which ones were ratifying yeah and if you have any additional comments but I also wish it wasn't sure what the blank states oh yeah yeah so I probably should have explained this slide I'm so basically this slide examines the legal status of eugenic sterilization in the u.s. so the states that have the the slash lines those were states that already had laws and effects by 1935 the ones with the dark that are black those are the states with pending bills that would eventually pass the next couple of years and then those white states were those that did not have any eugenic sterilization laws during the time that this image was created yeah I'm a medical student and often are still learning that genetics are a lot of the reasons we're seeing some disparities even though science has disproven it many times one of like the most common examples is we're taught that there's two different types of like blood pressure medication regiments to give to black patients and white patients and it's been there's so much like data so I'm I guess my question is in your experiences are there a way to sort of frame this to start a to move the conversation away from genetics because the data itself isn't working or like what do you think the next steps are to move away from in such a evidence-based field not using yes we're doing I think and of course I'm not like a scientific or medical expert but I think in my experience one of the things I've seen as a problem is that the science of the humanities kind of operate in isolation and that there's not necessarily an integration of you know like medical school like you know hard sciences whatever and they're not necessarily taking courses in the humanities that discuss these types of issues and so if people are being educated in these fields and their professors aren't you know well-versed in these issues the students aren't becoming well-versed in those issues then the next generation of you know scholars are not going to be well-versed in those issues so I think if those programs can come up with some type of way to I mean maybe have mandatory teaching requirements on like you know social determinants of health and other you know non-scientific effect like or a rather genetic impacts of disease that can be one step to start to unlearn these biologically determined discourses that have been permeating through the sciences and medicine you're gonna put their presentation it was great thanks branching off of the last questions so it's really important to integrate medical humanities research into teaching the next generation of doctors but I was wondering what sort of the next step in terms because you don't need to just teach the doctors you also need to influence politicians in order to change policy like for example teaching doctors isn't going to help the Flint water crisis so how exactly do you see bridging that next from teaching the next class of doctors into influencing policy that's a big yeah it's a great question a big question but I'll try my best to answer so yeah that's definitely a discrepancy I think my initial inclination is to say that you know we have to get involved in politics we need to be talking to our politicians we need to be calling and because I think at least the way I'm understood understand it is that you know politics would kind of decide what they want to study what issues they care about and that oftentimes it takes grassroots movements and literally the people to kind of push those ideas forward and kind of shape the direction in which our policies in America are going to go so that would be my first answer but I'd have to think about that more that's a good question yeah I would thank you for your presentation it was really amazing important work that you're doing I'm interested in just the number of times you sort of mentioned Harvard professors and particularly in this at Harvard academics so what that means for you as someone who is at Harvard in challenging what has happened do you go back into those archives and say hey do we need to disprove because I think a guy's a guy see is like he's I think his institution is still up and running I don't know if that's really challenged at Harvard so what is it for you to be doing work that also speaks directly to what Harvard professors have done yeah it's definitely a bit of cognitive dissonance walking around an institution that in many ways glorifies these figures from the past like there's literally a building at Harvard our student admissions Hall is called Agassiz Center the guy mentioned that said that black people were created alongside other beasts in the Garden of Eden like that's racist and that's a problem so I would say it's definitely there's definitely been steps by students to try to challenge you know the naming of buildings at our school and those legacies but I think one of the most important things that I've appreciated at least during my time here is an ignite at least that you know our anthropology department was littered rooted upon justifying the existence of slavery like that was how our anthropology department at Harvard was created you know and so it's good I think it's gonna take time but it's that it's definitely a dislike a dissonance experience at least just my experience as a grad student you know I try to find support from those that you know understand me I try to be honest about my experience of the apartment if I'm having problems or feeling uncomfortable or if I'm like you know things like that and for the most part it's well received so I think it's just a work in progress like these institutions have been around for hundreds of years and old habits die hard and they will hold on to those names for as long as they can but I think if we continue to challenge it definitely at some point hopefully we can reverse them I'm curious though this for the science such as it is of phrenology how was that applied to mixed-race people yeah interesting so I'll give ya so during that period so for the most part for most of American history at least during like the 19th 20th early 20th century if you had one drop of black you were black so it didn't matter if you're you know if your dad was half white and black and then like you got like you know multiple white people in your lineage you were black if you had black if you were black so a lot of the discourses that I discussed would also apply to mixed-race people which also like during the time period there was there was a lot of efforts to prevent racial mixing for that very problem because they believed the mixing of white and black people created these deformed human beings so they didn't like mixed-race people which they called mulattoes which is an outdated term don't use it I'll tell you that um so I didn't like them and but they applied the same types of ideals to them during the same I was curious what your thoughts were on the popularization or conversation surrounding the Henrietta Lacks book and movie and also if you had any thoughts about what should be done to make things less terrible for the lacs family yeah so for I guess those not familiar with the lacs case I'll do my best to briefly summarize basically in the 20th century a black woman went in for a routine like I think a uterine swab for cancer the doctors ended up harvesting her cells her cells never died and the people that harvested her cells basically became rich her family was poverty-stricken and never got any of the money that was made off of herself um so my thoughts on the book the movie etc I'm glad that education is happening I think it's important for people to know the ways in which you know bodies are literally exploited and monetized you know throughout by our scientific and medical establishments I hope it's a continual push for more because I think one of my Kalam softn times with discourses about scientific medical racism that people pick like three cases and they're like I know the history I know HeLa I know Tuskegee I know J Marion Sims and iPhone so that you have to make you know easier but you know so hopefully it's the start of larger discourses and discussions about you know the enduring legacy of scientific medical racism because you know a lot of this is even in our recent past like I discussed cases from the 1960s 1990s you know even as early as the 2000s I have like there's cases on that so I'm hoping it creates a wider conversation also creates more ethical research and medical practices in by these by these institutions and then was their second they should be compensated um I don't know how all those like laws work I'm not a lawyer but so there was probably some were written in legal code that justifies them not being compensated for their family members cells but they should be compensated she should have been compensation she should have been informed about her cells are being taken without her use and harvested for years and has literally helped cure so many diseases in society like it's not okay that her family is literally living in poverty and people are just sitting there rich off of her body so that's my take I don't know how I mean I think there was a legal battle for at some point they didn't win but I mean I'm hoping the author may have maybe given them some money from the book she wrote I'm not sure if that happened or if the movie that they created they gave them some money but I think that would be the right thing to do yeah how do you think an increase in diversity in medical practitioners would affect how people are treated I think who could help if we're talking about yeah I think I think increased diversity can help but there are still incidences in which diverse medical practitioners are biased towards their patients I have several examples from myself in which I've been treated by you know ethnic you know medical doctors and have been treated horribly and I'm sure other people as well have experienced that so again again I think it goes down to not only diversifying our education system and people are becoming doctors but also like diversifying our medical curriculum and actually actively trying to unlearn the biases that persisted in medicine for literally hundreds of years and until we do that like yeah we can make incremental change by having more diverse like you know medical and scientific establishment but if the curriculum is not changing if ideology is not changing then we're gonna be taking like one step four three steps back and this is gonna be so like slow so that's my thoughts so first off terrific talk Thanks love you so we've spoken a lot about how there needs to be somewhat of a revamping of kind of the education that people and the medical or scientific scientific communities need to need to undertake but I'm I wonder if you can speak to kind of like the importance of ethnic minorities getting more educated about these biases and kind of like the kind of social factors that might be influencing their health outcomes so that kind of like when they do encounter a medical professional that they're aware that okay more than likely you're not going to give me this medication more than likely you're going to treat my birth like this like if you could just speak a little bit to kind of like the importance of being educated when walking into one of those institutions very good point because the unfortunate reality is that these institutions are progressing slowly in terms of their ability to effectively and unbiased ly treat their patients is important for you know minority patients to be aware of what they could be encountering in a clinical setting my only the only thing I wonder is in which Avenue that would be best like effective like where would they learn how to like advocate for themselves and you know recognize bias in the clinic in the clinical setting like I was fortunate to have a mom who's a nurse who like has told me like you know you're gonna demand this you demand this when you go to the doctor's office oh they told you this like no don't listen to them and so I had an informal education in that area so yeah that would I mean there's some I know there's some smaller nonprofits that do things like that I was involved in one in Boston that actually what their goal was to educate black woman on health issues and how to you know better engage in clinical settings but I don't I'm just not sure how widespread in common those things actually are but that's a very important point I guess in terms of starting it's all it's all about making education more accessible but you know googling but it's like people need to be first made aware that it's an issue but I agree that patient education is also equally as important as well it should they shouldn't have to educate themselves but it's currently just as important as medical and scientific institutions becoming less biased good point thank you for the talk sort of going off that question just hearing your talk and thinking about how slow institutions are to change as time goes on and thinking about having that change be from the patient end of things have you thought maybe about like but what are some ways we can make talks like your talk available to like bigger wider groups of people so thinking about like media film have you thought about ways to widen yeah thought too much about that but I think one way you know one way could be to identify areas in which you know we may think clinician bias is occurring at a high rate and maybe actively going to like areas where large portion of the community congregate maybe like you know YMCA or like the recreational center and like advertising those things and having informal events I know media campaigns are also very important the youth loves Instagram Twitter and Facebook yeah everyone likes it so I mean that could also be an important way as well to spread information but my question would then be like who would be funding this and who would be pushing efforts to educate the public on the fact that they need to be aware of you know issues that they can encounter in the clinical setting that's something I'd also need to think further about something I often think about how can I make my work more accessible to people and kind of like deconstruct like the academic tower and you know make it accessible to the broader population and I've seen some ways people do this by publishing and like more like mainstream magazines that people actually read informal blogs could be one way but again there needs to be a lot of intentionality about making sure that those communities are actually accessing it and reading it and you know in taking the information hello all right did amazing so just out of curiosity wondering so saying like a perfect case scenario institutions government's make of course like appropriate changes to influence bias how important do you think it is to also I guess really engaged and really kind of tap into the individual biases that are still like in local communities because I think it's it's one thing if I don't know for example a medical school was more diverse in theory but if the individuals that are entering that program per se still are coming from all over the country with their own perceived notions from their environments their parents which you know it's a sickle down effect of from generations like how does that I guess play into a change in the bias that we see over all yeah yeah changing the individual that's I mean look easy but very difficult answers that would be we need a broad culture shift in American society we need to you know abandon the notion that we're in this post-racial society in which racism doesn't exist because colorblindness is also a form of I believe a form of racism and so one we need to combat the fact that we had like I don't know where this education have like maybe this school system as young as elementary school I don't know how that's gonna happen but there needs to be a concerted effort to you know reject this notion that we're in a post-racial society racism very much still exists and just because it's not you know we have a black bathroom and a white bathroom but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist and that doesn't mean it's not as dangerous so yeah I think the individual if we're really talking like how could we get individuals to change its gonna start when you're young and I think it's going to start will students are you know starting to engage with other people which is like elementary school middle school I don't know about you I didn't have any discussions on race bias ease discrimination where I grew up I don't think anyone did so I think that would be an important area to help start creating that change thanks for your talk given the terrible history that exists in medicine and between people of color there's this huge distrust that people of color have towards their healthcare professionals and you touched on this a little bit but what do you think is the best most immediate step that healthcare professionals can take to address that distress and foster a better patient-physician relationship yeah that's a good question I think one way in which I think the distrust is justified right like we went over like yeah it's justified but I think as corny as this may sound first impressions are everything so if your first encounter with the clinical professional is problematic or it makes you feel weird or bad about yourselves then like that's just going to reinforce that cycle of distress so I think you know doctors need to really think critically without being you know like patronizing to their minority patients that like I need to make sure that this is like a healthy safe non-problematic encounter with my patient and it's going to take intentionality and buffle miss on the part of physicians but that's my first hunch just off the bat yeah so I work in the industry and science and I mean you're absolutely right like it's not even close to being like racist notions in science are absolutely not even close to like being out of our like forefront of our minds so what is something that like people like me who want to be cognizant of these things how can we call it out like do we just say like your research is I don't want to leave I don't wanna lose your job um yes so I think I think this question kind of comes onto like a lie ship like how can we advocate and you support you know underrepresented minorities and help create less racialized science and discourses I mean if you're noticing something problematic with the colleagues work I think just sitting them down and having a common I mean people shouldn't have to not be aggressive but you know people don't respond well to aggression I don't even like that but just having a conversation that's backed with fact I think historical fact is a very important way to back up to substantiate why something can be problematic like you know if we're talking about like contemporary maternal death rates in black women you can point to specific historical examples as to like why this is a persistent I'm trend so I think if you just come in educated firm and just have the courage to call people out if you think something of the problem I think that's a very important and critical step that most people aren't taking which is why ridiculous articles are still being published to this day because no one's talking and then also because these spaces are more often than not they're not diverse so let the likelihood of people talking about these issues or viewing it as problematic as slimmer so yeah I think having the courage to speak is important clock we are wrapping up big things again to do it off doodle do oh c'mon do again for presentation [Applause] and again thank you all for coming out this evening really appreciate your comments and your questions please I think Kudo Newbury will be here for a couple more minutes that people have additional questions also I didn't really talk about this but if there are any books or recommendations or things you want encourage people to check out if they're interested in learning more about this topic or yeah actually I wrote down a few that are relevant should I just say about yeah yeah um Killick oh yeah sorry um so I guess ones that I guess are relevant to this talk would be killing the black body by Dorothy Roberts medical apartheid by Harriet Washington body and soul by Alondra Nelson fit to be tied by Rebecca clutchin and examining Tuskegee by Susan revurb II and also some of the work by David Williams on racial inequalities and health and Hellena Hansen has a lot of interesting discussions on the contemporary opioid epidemic and the issues with race that are persisting throughout it so yeah thank you all again for coming out [Music] you

Channel: GBH Forum Network

Views: 146,882

Keywords: Boston, WGBH, Scientific Racism, medicine, medical experiments, medical history, Tuskeegee, Udodiri R. Okwandu, Harvard University, History of Science, syphillis study, ob-gyn studies, sterilization, NOVA, Cafe Sci Boston

Id: WTniVzGBj5w

Length: 55min 45sec (3345 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2019