Racism in medical research

What comes to mind when you think of racist medical experimentation in the United States? For most people, it's the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis study, during which doctors allowed Black men to die from syphilis in order to study "the natural progression of the disease," even though effective treatment existed. In her book Medical Apartheid, medical journalist Harriet Washington argues that this is just one example in a long history of racism against Black people in medical research, and that we need to face this history if we are to build trust with Black communities.

We discuss key points from her book, starting in the age of chattel slavery in the United States up through Americans' collaboration with South African apartheid doctors aiming to develop racially-targeted biological warfare.

This topic has implications for health communicators who are writing and designing for marginalized audiences. More broadly, awareness of this history is necessary to make sense of current health disparities by race, most recently made evident with COVID-19.