White surgeon moved black children's skull parts, operated on woman's uterus without anesthesia

[HamdenRice]

Harriet Washington, an expert on medical ethics, has written an important new book, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present." She was interviewed on DemocracyNow! this morning.

One of her theses is that much of the early medical and especially surgical progress accomplished by the medical profession in the 19th century was achieved through experimentation on slaves, who obviously could not withhold their consent.

The experiments she describes are horrific. Moreover, because these eminent doctors believed that African American slaves were little more than animals with little sense of feeling, many of these surgical experiments were carried out without anesthesia.

Experiments included removing a black man's jawbone; rearranging the skull bones of black children; and operating on the uterus's of black women in an attempt to cure a complication of childbirth called a fistula.

Here is a chilling excerpt of her interview:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/19/1432231

HARRIET WASHINGTON: Right. James Marion Sims was a very important surgeon from Alabama, and all of his medical experimentation took place with slaves. He took the skulls of young children, young black children -- only black children -- and he opened their heads and moved around the bones of the skull to see what would happen, posited as a cure for disease, but there was no rationale for that. He also decided to remove the jawbone of a slave, but this slave was pretty intractable. He did not want the surgery. He loudly protested against it. And in response, Dr. Sims had him tied to a barber's chair and held immobile, while he operated on him without anesthesia.

But he’s most infamous for his reproductive experiments with black women. He bought, or otherwise acquired, a group of black women who he housed in a laboratory, and over the period of five years and approximately forty surgeries on one slave alone, he sought to cure a devastating complication of childbirth called vesicovaginal fistula. This cure entailed repeatedly doing incisions on their genitalia, very painful and, you know, very emotionally difficult, as you can imagine. And in the end, he claims to have cured one of them.

And after this, he went north, where his medical fortune was made. He became the toast of Second Empire Paris when he went there to be the personal physician of Princess Eugenie. And when he returned to New York, he was elected the president of the American Medical Association.

I think this is really important, because although often you speak of surgeons and doctors who do nonconsensual experimentation, and we think of these Frankensteinian characters, but the reality is these have tended to be overachieving adepts who were stellar physicians. They were well-revered, well-respected within their profession in their time, and people only knew of their work through their own bowdlerized versions of it. They wrote up these accounts in medical journals, but they never characterized them as abusive experimentation, because it was accepted for them that you operated on slaves who couldn’t say no.

<end quote>

The entire transcript is already available at DemocracyNow.org

[Unperson]

1. When is this part of our history appropriately going to be called GENOCIDE?

Instead of something nostalgic like "the slave days".

[Solly Mack]

7. When America abandons lies and myths as "history" and embraces truth

until then...

[Recursion]

21. Genocide implies the attempt to annihilate a race or nation

which this wasn't, and I don't like seeing that term misused. Enslavement is horrible but that's no reason to call it genocide, anymore than you should call genocide enslavement. An example of genocide in this country's history would be our treatment of Native Americans, which was a deliberate and explicit attempt to eradicate their nations/races.

[HamdenRice]

32. Slavery was genocide

I think you have an unnecessarily narrow definition of genocide. You imply that there must be an intent to completely eradicate a people. Genocide is the killing in whole or in part a race or people.

Most Americans have an extremely limited understanding of slavery and its impact in the US, in the Caribbean and in Africa. Estimates of the number of people kidnapped from Africa range from 10 to 20 million, with mortality rates of the middle passage between 20% and 50%, although leading historian of the slave trade, Philip Curtin has documented that at least 10 million people were captured. The warfare that was needed to sustain the trade, however, killed millions more.

But even more significant, and little understood outside professional historical circles, is that almost everywhere in the Americas slavery was a death sentence, as demonstrated by many historians such as Franklin Knight in "Slave Society in Cuba." Slavery was so profitable that most slaves died within a few years and were replaced, and conditions were so horrible for child bearing age women, that no self-sustaining slave populations existed, except for the upper south of the US (eg Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, etc.).

Unfortunately, Americans tend to think of slavery in terms of this extremely rare form, which forms Americans' "romantic" notions of plantation slavery and generations of slaves. Even in these places, however, because of their ability to sustain slave populations, slaves themselves became one of the biggest exports, and slaves who were sent out of the upper south faced near certain death on the frontiers of Mississippi, Alabama and other deep south areas, giving rise to the expression, "sold down the river" as the ultimate betrayal.

That's why although slaves' descendants of Virginia have long historical memories of generations in slavery, in places like Haiti and Cuba, the people who experienced emancipation were generally people who had been born in Africa. That's why the Haitian Revolution was organized around African religious societies.

The slave trade devastated and depopulated African coastal populations serially, beginning in Senegambia, moving all the way down to Angola, depopulating many chiefdoms and kingdoms, destroying institutions of stability and erasing entire peoples. Curtin also notes that while the Atlantic slave trade was occurring a trans-Sahara slave trade was taking almost as many people to north Africa to become slaves of the Arabs.

I don't see how you can call the destruction of countless chiefdoms, kingdoms and populations in Africa and the continuous destruction of the survivors throughout the Americas for centuries anything other than genocide.

[Recursion]

37. Well, no

I think you have an unnecessarily narrow definition of genocide. You imply that there must be an intent to completely eradicate a people.

Yes, since it means "-cide" (killing) of a "gen" (race or people).

Genocide is the killing in whole or in part a race or people.

Every murder is killing a race in part, is every murder genocide?

And anyways, the number of persons of African descent held as slaves in 1863 was significantly higher than the number of persons kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped over to the US (4 million vs. something like 2 million, from what I've read). So extermination was not the intent or the effect.

When you say "genocide" do you mean "massive and horrible race-based cruelty"? That's certainly what it was, but that's a novel definition for "genocide".

[HamdenRice]

39. You simply have your facts wrong

First, you don't seem to understand the meaning of genocide. Here is the definition in international law:

Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as

“ ...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Slavery attempted to destroy African communities in order to gather slaves, and then it attempted to destroy the enslaved for profit. All of these are applicable to what happened during the genocide of slavery. Note clause (e), an interesting clause of the Convention. Most slave captives were, in fact, young teenagers. The forcible transfer of this population of children from their African parents to white slaveholders alone would be considered genocide against the African communities from which they were taken. But of course, the more violent acts described in the other clauses were much more dramatic.

Second, you seem to have your facts about how slavery actually operated wrong. Third you are extrapolating from your view of upper south slavery to slavery in the New World overall.

As I mentioned, based on what professional historians have concluded, slavery generally was a death sentence for people forcibly imported into this country, South America and the Caribean. Everyone involved in the system knew that they were intentionally bringing people here to die by over work, malnutrition, violence and disease, at a profit. The fact that the population increased in the upper south is an exception to how slavery worked demographically. Your notion that "only" 2 million were imported into the Americas is simply not in line with the work of professional historians.

[Recursion]

38. Just saw your numbers; that changes some of my post

If the number is 10-20 million kidnapped that changes my thinking somewhat; I had read 2-3 million made the middle passage from the early 1700's until its effective end in the early 1800's.

Either way, I still don't see a reason to call it genocide. Call it what it was: massive and systemic abuse, kidnapping, rape, torture, and forced labor. We have, contemporary to slavery, a "textbook" example of genocide: the slaughter of the Native Americans. I have no desire to play a "who suffered more" game since neither of us were alive then, and I don't know if suffering genocide would be "worse" or "better" than suffering massive and systemic abuse, kidnapping, rape, torture, and forced labor. But the two aren't the same thing.

[HamdenRice]

40. It has nothing to do with who suffered more -- it has to do with what happened

The slave trade and slavery were genocide. So was the treatment of Native Americans. So was the attempted extermination of the Jews of Europe. So was the Turkish assault on the Armenians. So was the Hutu slaughter of the Tutsi in Rwanda, but also so have been Tutsi slaughters of the Hutu in Burundi.

There is no monopoly on genocide. It happened to more than one group and in each case was different.

BTW, I am surprised you disagreed with my post before you even read it.

[Recursion]

41. I did read it, I just read it wrong

BTW, I am surprised you disagreed with my post before you even read it.

Thanks, I was short my share of condescension today :)

I did read it, and I thought it said 2 million rather than 20 million, which is what I had read before.

The slave trade and slavery were genocide.

Fine. You are free to use "genocide" however you want and I'm not going to argue this anymore.

[NorthernSpy]

45. Holocaust deniers make use of the same arguments you do...

Oh, there was no genocidal intent: most of those people who died at ___(fill in the blank)____ Camp just got sick, that's all. The Nazis weren't trying to kill them; they just died. It was too bad, really. The Nazis valued them as laborers. And the death toll was only 100,000 in any case...


:eyes:

Thanks, I was short my share of condescension today

Condescension is appropriate (given that you leapt in with an opinion despite being short of basic facts), but it's not really up to the job.

The right response to you is contempt. And from me, you have that. More than you can imagine.

[HamdenRice]

53. Sorry if it sounded snarky, but it's a serious issue ...

In other words, I thought you said you read "somewhere" about the number of captives, suggesting you had not read my post.

But NorthernSpy makes a good point, that I was going to refrain from making till he made it: It's that denying that slavery and the slave trade was a genocide is somehow an acceptable "difference of opinion," but denying that the Holocaust occurred or that the Armenian atrocity was genocide is recognized as a severe form of racism.

Of course, I'm not saying you are a racist, but that American society has somehow so widely mischaracterized and misunderstood what happened, and that Americans are so reluctant to use the word genocide, is disturbing.

In a way, I think that the Nazi genocide was so unique and perverse that it prevents us from understanding what genocide is. Hitler and the Nazis were unique because it seems that they committed genocide almost purely out of racial hatred for the Jews.

But most genocides have mixed purposes. The intention to eliminate a people is linked to other intentions. The genocide against the Native Americans was primarily because whites wanted their land, not just because they hated Indians. The Hutu genocide against the Tutsis, perhaps one of the most tragic, was because the Hutu had justifiable terror that the Tutsis were about to commit genocide; they two groups were like scorpions in a bottle. The Turkish genocide was over land, nationalism and concerns about security. The Germans genocide against the Hereros in Namibia was basically over colonial discipline and control and making an example to other tribes. The Cambodian genocide was committed in pursuit of an ideological restructuring of society.

And the genocide against Africans was motivated largely by a lust for African labor. That does not make it any less a genocide.

Finally, you seem to believe that slavery and genocide have to be one or the other -- that they can't be mixed. But the Jews of Europe were not just exterminated; many were enslaved in concentration camps that served the dual purpose of exploiting slave labor and exterminating them.

I hope that you re-examine your views and some of the underlying assumptions, historical beliefs and even feelings you may have about slavery.

Because I just don't think it is something over which people should "agree to disagree" anymore than holocaust denial is something over which people should "agree to disagree."

[Recursion]

59. I can say I'm very sparing with my use of the word "genocide"

I only use it when there is a deliberate and explicit attempt to exterminate a racial, ethnic, cultural or I suppose religious group (though I'm less likely to call a purely-religious based mass murder "genocide" without other factors -- ie, even if China started killing all Falun Gong practitioners I probably wouldn't call that genocide).

It's that denying that slavery and the slave trade was a genocide is somehow an acceptable "difference of opinion," but denying that the Holocaust occurred or that the Armenian atrocity was genocide is recognized as a severe form of racism.

In Turkey, Ataturk explicitly said "we must rid Anatolia of its non-Turkish elements" (I think that was the sentence; I need to look that up again).
In the Reich, Hitler's explicit goal of destroying the European Jewish community is so well-documented that denying that intent is simply perverse.
In the US, several administrations but most notably Andrew Jackson's had very explicit and documented policies for the displacement and murder of Native Americans.

Now, if and when you can find similar documentation for most (or even any) of the 5-or-so generations who engaged in the slave trade in the US, that shows they did it for the purpose of removing blacks from -- where? not the US. East Africa, I guess -- and exterminating them, I would then call the institution of slavery in America "genocide"; since I've never seen anything approaching that, my judgment remains that slavery was then what it still is today: an attempt to profit from enslaved labor, and not an attempt to eradicate any particular ethnic, racial, or cultural group.

Let's take some cases we seem to all agree are genocide:

The Armenians in Turkey in the 1920s
The Jews and Roma in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s
The Native Americans in the US in the mid-19th century
The Tutsis in Rwanda in the early 1990's

All of these have several factors in common
First, the factors that lead me to call them genocide
1. They were deliberate state-ordered (or at least state-sanctioned) actions
2. Their goal (and this was explicitly stated in all 4 cases) was to kill or at least "remove" the ethnic group from a certain territory
3. They succeeded in displacing and/or killing a large portion of the targeted group

They share some other factors in common, though not as part of what I'm using as the definition of genocide (though I would argue they follow from that definition)
1. They were relatively short in duration, generally lasting one generation or so
2. They were essentially successful (there are few Jews or Roma in eastern Europe still, few Armenians in Turkey, few Native Americans in the US, etc.) unless stopped by an outside force
3. They were committed by states or groups facing a resources crisis

Those second set of three characteristics was just something I've noticed they have in common; not part of the definition. But taking the three defining characteristics, slavery certainly meets #3, partially #1, but really not at all #2 as far as I can see. Like I said, I can point you to documents demonstrating the Turkish governments' desire to remove Armenians from Anatolia, or the Nazi regime's desire to remove Jews from Europe. I've never seen anything similar regarding slavery. Who was the target? East Africans in Africa? East Africans in America? Which government made it its policy? The Federal government or the individual states? Or both? And who set this policy? Why was it so much less "successful" (an uncomfortable term) than the other genocides in terms of the number of people alive before and after?

Maybe my definition of genocide is out of touch, though I think it's pretty much the UN's. Maybe you think "not-genocide" is somehow a defense of slavery (like I said, I'm not sure whether slavery is "worse" than genocide or not). I don't know.

[NorthernSpy]

61. EAST Africans?

Now, if and when you can find similar documentation for most (or even any) of the 5-or-so generations who engaged in the slave trade in the US, that shows they did it for the purpose of removing blacks from -- where? not the US. East Africa, I guess -- and exterminating them, I would then call the institution of slavery in America "genocide"; since I've never seen anything approaching that, my judgment remains that slavery was then what it still is today: an attempt to profit from enslaved labor, and not an attempt to eradicate any particular ethnic, racial, or cultural group.

There was an East African slave trade. But the overwhelming majority of people who wound up as slaves in the US were from WEST Africa.

So you don't actually know much of anything about the slave trade, you just "know" it wasn't a genocide. Even though nations, ethnicities, and cultures -- not to mention countless individuals -- were undeniably eradicated in the process.

[Recursion]

62. Typo and brainfart. West

Sorry. I'm doing a paper on East African languages right now and the muscle memory is still stuck in my hands.

[HamdenRice]

63. You seem like an open minded person

but I really think that if you want to understand this issue, you need a stronger factual background. I'm not trying to be snarky, but I notice from your post that you are not even aware of what part of Africa the slaves were drawn from. They were drawn overwhelmingly and in succession from West Africa (present day Senegal, down to the bight of Benin, which is now Nigeria, all the way south to Angola.) The slave trade then skipped over South Africa because the coast of current day Namibia was almost perfectly empty pure desert (it was called the skeleton coast for a reason), skipped the Cape which was occupied by the Dutch and then picked up again around Mozambique, the only part of East Africa to be thoroughly ravaged by the slave trade.

If you read books about this period you will discover that slavers did in fact completely depopulate and empty out each successive area, stamping out whole civilizations. The fact that it occurred over centuries does not mean it was not genocide because you are looking at it from a perspective of improper "composition." By that, I mean we could look at the genocide in Gambia in one decade. We would have genocide on the Congo in another. If you were a member of a tribe on the Congo River in 1800, you would have experienced the "classic" genocide you seem to want to impose. Only when the unit of analysis is "Africa" does the genocide seem difuse and spread out over "generations." But from the African perpsective, "Africa" is the wrong unit of analysis.

Now, if and when you can find similar documentation for most (or even any) of the 5-or-so generations who engaged in the slave trade in the US, that shows they did it for the purpose of removing blacks from -- where? not the US. East Africa, I guess -- and exterminating them, I would then call the institution of slavery in America "genocide"; since I've never seen anything approaching that, my judgment remains that slavery was then what it still is today: an attempt to profit from enslaved labor, and not an attempt to eradicate any particular ethnic, racial, or cultural group.

I think you are misunderstanding criminal intent here. The goal was not to exterminate Africans just for the purpose of exterminating them. But it was the purpose to exterminate them in the course of using their labor. Everyone involved knew that the slaves were destined for certain death, either in the middle passage or during the 3-5 years that they would "last" in the Americas. The intent was genocide even if they did not have the pure purpose of killing for the purpose of killing. They were killing for profit.

By your definition, the Cambodia genocide was not genocide because the goal of the Khmer Rouge was to create a perfect society, not to exterminate the Cambodian people. But everyone acknowledges that the Cambodian genocide was indeed genocide.

As for the conditions and definitions you provided, I just can't agree that they are required for genocide to occur. If the Russian pogroms has been more thorough, I think we would agree that they would have been genocide, even though they were largely disorganized.

That said, even taking these conditions, again I think you would benefit from some good histories of the era. For example, on the "state-ordered" criteria -- the main goals of the European powers in the age of discovery was mercantile competition, which involved grabbing Caribbean islands and mainland territory and populating it with slaves. The empires organized, funded and protected the slave trade, although the actuall killing was carried out by businessmen (sea captains and merchants). It was clearly state policy to encourage slavery until Britain had a change of mind in the early 1800s.

The goal obviously was to remove as many people from West Africa as possible. And they succeeded. The slave trade was not a minor demographic loss; it depopulated and destroyed huge swaths of West Africa and the Congo. Even today, Africa (despite the way it is presented on TV) is one of the least populated continents, and that is a result of slavery. The collapse of populations and societies in many areas was nearly complete in the 1600s and 1700s in many areas taking centries for the populations to reach pre-slave trade levels. I suppose that the depopulation of Africa is simply one of those facts that many Americans are just not aware of. But consider how vast, fertile and underpopulated countries like Congo and Angola remain even today compared to European, Asian and American nations -- that's a result of slavery.

Like I said, I can point you to documents demonstrating the Turkish governments' desire to remove Armenians from Anatolia, or the Nazi regime's desire to remove Jews from Europe. I've never seen anything similar regarding slavery. Who was the target? East Africans in Africa? East Africans in America? Which government made it its policy?

Maybe you are not familiar with the time line here. By the time the US came into existence the slave trade was already just a decade from ending. The documents you seek exist. They are in the 17th and 18th century correspondence of the crowns of Spain, Portugal, England, France and Holland. That's the deliberate policy that the famous humanitarian monk and first anti-slavery activist -- de las Casas -- was writing against in his letters to the Spanish Crown. Sorry if you aren't aware of them, but they certainly exist.

Lastly, I never accused you of defending slavery. The point is that our knowledge as Americans is framed in such a way that we cannot recognize what to historians is an established fact. Again I liken it to what happened to the Indians: they suffered genocide because people wanted their land; Africans suffered genocide because people wanted their labor. The fact that these two genocides were not for the sole purpose of killing them off as a people is irrelevant.

[Recursion]

64. Like I said, typo. West.

I'm doing my thesis on East African languages right now and "east" is what I type by habit at this point.

[HamdenRice]

66. Which African language?

I used to know a southern African language, SeTswana, but I've pretty much forgotten it all now. SeTswana is part of the Bantu language group. Is the one you are studying part of that group as well?

They are very interesting and very difficult. Are you studying it analytically, as in linquistics, or trying to learn to speak it?

[Recursion]

67. The Bantu family and its influence by Semitic languages

Particularly Swahili and Xhosa, since those are the two I can at least hold a conversation in. It's for a linguistics degree (hopefully).

[Unperson]

65. You left an important one out.

And one that I was not aware of until I read the "The New Rulers of the World" The "Aborigines" of Austalia are still suffering through a genocide and it is little reported. Up until the 1960s the "Aborigines" were considered as fauna in legal definitions. Really tragic, read that book.

[HamdenRice]

72. Until the Eddy Mabo Case

The landmark case about indigenous rights in Australia. An excellent read!

[Taverner]

70. Excellent rebuttal

[HamdenRice]

73. Thanks! nt

[barb162]

26. Slavery is the proper term, not genocide, I think

Slaves were too valuable as workers to kill them whereas genocide implies wanton killing. It was a horrible chapter not only here but many other countries and in many other times and even in our own time. Sex and other worker are still being used as slaves fairly widely around the world.

[HamdenRice]

33. That's a myth, pure and simple

Please see my post above.

[Taverner]

69. Exactly! nt

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Much more recent was the Tuskegee Syphillis "study", where black men who had the disease were

followed but not treated, so that the natural history of the untreated disease, which is horrible and was already quite well known, could be studied. This was carried out by the U.S. Public Health Service!

I'm sure this must be covered by a book with that subject matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_experiment

[HamdenRice]

4. She covers the Tuskeegee experiment also

She has an interesting take on it -- namely, that focus on that experiment obscures the fact that it was merely part of a longer medical tradition of experimentation on blacks that predates it and continues to this day.

[Lance_Boyle]

17. continues to this day?

Examples?

[HamdenRice]

19. Yes, to the present

She discusses at least three present or very recent examples.

1. A Columbia University study begun in the early 1990s:

HARRIET WASHINGTON: Oh, they took, let’s see, from 110 to 36 black boys and gave them fenfluramine, which is half of that Phen-Fen drug that was taken off the market, because it was cardiotoxic, caused heart problems. They gave it to these boys in an attempt to see whether they would show some inclination toward violence. And they found the boys, because the boys were the younger brothers of children already in the juvenile justice system, so that was coercive in itself. They used the juvenile justice system to identify boys. And again, the protocol, which I read, only indicates black boys are eligible. White boys were not eligible.

2. A trial of Norplant, a long term birth control implant, that was tested on Black girls in Baltimore a city that is 82% Black, so the trial participants were 95% black girls. Norplant has been taken off the market after thousands of lawsuits. Washington says the trial "was presented as, as the Philadelphia Inquirer said, a way to reduce the underclass."

3. A case in which she is professionally involved opposing rules changes that would loosen restrictions on medical experimentation in prisons.

It's all in the transcript.

[TheDebbieDee]

6. I think HBO or Showtime made a mini-series about

the Tuskegee Experiment about 10 or 12 years ago....I remember seeing it.

[LostinVA]

10. HBO movie -- it was very good

[soothsayer]

3. If surgeons weren't surgeons they'd be serial killers; they share

the ability and desire to cut into another human being. That's what doctors say, anyway. Wild.

[HamdenRice]

8. My doctor friend says the same thing nt

[Beausoir]

44. That's outrageous and complete and utter bullshit.

One of the most moronic things I've yet seen posted here and I've seen quite a lot of really stupid things.

I happen to love a surgeon and the LAST thing he resorts to is cutting into someone. All other avenues are exhausted first.

Let's hope you never require the services of a skilled, educated, trained serial killer.

[HamdenRice]

58. Talk to an internist

Perhaps the point was overstated, but people in different fields of medicine have views (maybe stereotypes) of each other, some of which have a grain of truth. Pediatricians tend to like kids. Orthopedic surgeons are more likely than other docs to have been athletes. And I have often heard a member of one of the "peaceful" non-invasive specialties, like internists, say that surgery is a kind of focused, theraputic violence that some people can do and others can't.

[Beausoir]

75. I'm married to an Orthopaedic Surgeon. You have NO idea what you are talking about.

I hope you never are stricken with Arthritis or Multiple Myeloma.
I hope you never need a hip replacement.
I hope you never experience a motor vehicle accident and need your shattered pelvis rebuilt.
I hope you never fall off a ladder and bust your ankle to smithereens.
I hope you never fall out of your deer-stand and bust your leg so badly that the bone is stuck in the mud.

Because....if any of that ever happens to you...you surely wouldn't want a surgeon to practice "Theraputic (sic) Violence" on you.

You have NO idea what you are talking about.

And if and when one of these things happens to you...I'm betting you don't have the cajones to insult your surgeon to his face.

It's really easy to insult people when you are hiding behind your keyboard.

[HamdenRice]

80. A surgeon saved my life -- but you are way over-reacting

I had a very serious spinal condition and was going to be paralyzed from the neck down. A great surgeon prevented that from happening. So you don't have to write, I hope you never need a surgeon .... etc.

At the hospital, however, there was a very high tech kiosk where you could look at video clips of the surgeries that the hospital performed. Before my surgery, I took a look at my proposed surgery and after about 15 seconds realized, I don't want to know about this.

Most people cannot cut into another human being. That's a fact. So much a fact that it is a staple of fiction and movies (the layman forced to do surgery). In fact, most non-surgeon doctors don't want to do this. This sub thread is basically saying, it takes a special kind of mentality to be a surgeon. And sadly in the mid 1800s, certain southern slave owning surgeons took that mentality to a terrible level.

The fact that you cannot understand this and react so violently against it just shows you are way over-reacting to this simple notion because of your personal relationship to a surgeon.

[Beausoir]

78. Honestly? If your Internist is throwing around terms like "theraputic (sic) violence" ...

It is TIME for you to find another doctor. A COMPETENT doctor.

Your "friend" the "internist" is a quack.

You are doing yourself a disservice by soliciting this idiot.

[Virginia Dare]

5. So what, we need to get over all of that...

:sarcasm:

[jgraz]

9. you're just too thin-skinned

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[HamdenRice]

12. If this is a reference to the recent slavery apology threads ...

This book is very relevant. People tend to think that they had nothing to do with slavery and since it ended over a century ago, they did not benefit from it.

But anyone who has had a successful surgery is probably benefiting from knowledge that was wrung from the body of a slave through the agony of surgery without anesthesia.

[Solly Mack]

14. Precisely!!!

[Virginia Dare]

16. That's an excellent point...n/t

[crispini]

25. Right on!

The collective American "gestalt" is still very much affected by the legacy of slavery, as this book clearly demonstrates. Our society has been formed (twisted?) by the legacy of the "peculiar institution" and still bears its marks. Like a bonsai that has been twisted by wire, when the wire is taken away the marks remains. We were ALL born after the wire was taken off, but some of us know our history and can see the wire's marks. Others, like the OP of that thread, choose to ignore history and think that the bonsai was just born like that or something.

[TZ]

11. There is still similar crap today....

I just left a department at NIH doing Malaria Vaccine testing in clinical trials on children in Africa where it seems its more important that the researchers there get good publications and status and refrain from looking bad than the safety and the efficacy of the vaccine (not all of the people there were like that but the good competent people in charge were pushed out so that these idiots could take charge). It seems that its a double handicap that these kids are not only black and poor but African too (non-americans being even less important it seems).:cry:

[Solly Mack]

13. Did you see the movie "Constant Gardener"?

Drug trials and big pharma abuses in Africa?(murder)

[HamdenRice]

15. I was going to make the same comparison! nt

[TZ]

18. I know..

but having just lived through something similar I don't think I could take it...at least I didn't deal with murder though but everything else-dishonesty, backstabbing, incompetency,and deliberate smear tactics- was there...:-(

[Solly Mack]

20. ((((turtlesue)))) such an experience can be life-changing

and I'm sorry you had to go through it.

[TZ]

24. thanks...

I can't even begin to explain how horrible, since for 3 months I had the best job I have ever had- and now, well, I am working a non-challenging temp job and wondering if my ex-boss is still being pushed around by the bullies at NIH..its going to be a while before I can let things go..my tagline is the sum of my experience there (May of 06 to December 06):-(

[barb162]

27. Yes, but I wonder how correct that was.

It was a great movie.

Patients in this country are being used as guinea pigs too. What gets me is there still is no way to test drugs completely without finally testing them on humans. And people can die as a result.

[TZ]

28. but there are ways to minimize the risks...

and often times they are ignored to expedite research or push through FDA approval or even, sadly to make someone's published paper look better. I know. I have seen it.

[Solly Mack]

42. Unethical drug trials do take place

Without consent and without full disclosure and without ethical practices, testing on humans is criminal, imnsho...and without full disclosure and ethical practice, there can be no real consent.

The good health of the middle/upper classes should not come at the expense of the poor in any country.

Using someone's desperation against them is just plain wrong.


Moves to outlaw 'unethical' drug trials
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/803138.stm

Firms attacked over child medicines
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/752464.stm

Row over medical tests on humans
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/736138.stm

FDA in Third World Drug Trial Scandals
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/health.info/twninfohealth034.htm

and in America

Guinea Pig Kids: How New York City is Using Children to Test Experimental AIDS Drugs
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/22/151230
from 1999
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/308130.stm

as for the movie itself..

Here is a good article on it from the Nation...
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/shah

[TZ]

46. Yes but how can you tell..

My former boss went to Switzerland to talk to WHO in June about how they need to inform people of consent. He told me quote: I went to discuss how we tell mothers in Africa we may potentially kill their children endquote. So I do know a little about it. Now he's gone. The other guy there was a little involved in the Helsinki Protocols but now has no clue what's going on. So technically the study at NIH I was involved in has met all the standards but from the inside its highly corrupt. I imagine this is not the only time something like this happened (the most competant and ethical researcher ejected from the project due to being a threat...) And thats what troubles me to this day. Thinking about sharing my concerns with a letter to FDA to see if any oversight can be done.

[yurbud]

52. yep--though not much better here when pharma gets to pick lab to test safety of drugs

that's why we get things like phenphen a few years back and other drugs that went through the approval process but somehow had nasty undocumented side effects anyway. When one of the players gets to pick the umpire, the game is fixed.

[Solly Mack]

68. True. I made note of that in post 42

[yurbud]

71. another reason for firewalls against corruption. Orrin Hatch blocked safety testing of supplements

even though some have killed people like herbal ecstacy or "brain factor" made from ground up cow pituitaries that could cause mad cow disease.

Of course he got money from that industry.

[AliceWonderland]

22. This was a very powerful piece on DN

Thanks for posting this -- I highly recommend this interview. It has stayed with me for a long time.

[Catherine Vincent]

23. My ancestors went through so much misery and agony.

It's a wonder our people survived.

[Jcrowley]

29. K&R

You may also consider reading "Acres of Skin" and "The Plutonium Files."

The Secret history of US medical experimentation is one the darkest of many dark secrets in the American closet.

[me b zola]

30. I saw Ms. Washington on Democracy Now!.

I was shocked to learn about how recently these programs continued. Unfortunately, I was not as shocked to learn how the people responsible for this barbarism have gone not only unpunished, but in many cases they are held in high esteem.

Thanks for posting this, HR.

[Rosemary2205]

31. this is NOT old history, this is still CURRENT

My own mother and grandmother have given me some very terrifying stories of how they were treated by white male doctors - which is about all that was available. We sit around and we "wonder" why health care to African Americans is so much worse. It's partly about money but that's not all it is. It's generation after generation of being abused, ignored and mistreated by white doctors.

[HamdenRice]

34. VERY important point -- experimentation on African Americans still ongoing

which I should have put in the OP. Here's a response I wrote above about this:

She discusses at least three present or very recent examples.

1. A Columbia University study begun in the early 1990s:

HARRIET WASHINGTON: Oh, they took, let’s see, from 110 to 36 black boys and gave them fenfluramine, which is half of that Phen-Fen drug that was taken off the market, because it was cardiotoxic, caused heart problems. They gave it to these boys in an attempt to see whether they would show some inclination toward violence. And they found the boys, because the boys were the younger brothers of children already in the juvenile justice system, so that was coercive in itself. They used the juvenile justice system to identify boys. And again, the protocol, which I read, only indicates black boys are eligible. White boys were not eligible.

2. A trial of Norplant, a long term birth control implant, that was tested on Black girls in Baltimore a city that is 82% Black, so the trial participants were 95% black girls. Norplant has been taken off the market after thousands of lawsuits. Washington says the trial "was presented as, as the Philadelphia Inquirer said, a way to reduce the underclass."

3. A case in which she is professionally involved opposing rules changes that would loosen restrictions on medical experimentation in prisons.

It's all in the transcript.

[Blue_Tires]

35. there is a long history of robbing black graves well

there was a story years ago in the Atlanta Constitution about this janitor at the Medical College of GA that was cleaning up in the basement of one of the older building and found some hidden bones--he thought they were corpses from a mass murderer, so he called the police who excavated the ground under the basement and found no fewer than 200 (!) remains of African-Americans...A look at the school records revealed that 100 years ago, one of their favorite things to do was exhume recently buried people in black cemeteries to dissect and experiment on...It had been going on for at least two decades as well.

[HamdenRice]

36. Yes, that's another one of her themes as well

dissection of African American remains without consent. And she alleges that this is still ongoing -- that some hospitals make it difficult for people to prevent their loved ones' remains from ending up as subjects for autopsy or dissection.

[Cobalt Violet]

43. K & R

I don't really know what to say at this point. But this is very, very sick. And I read that post at the bottom about how it is still going on and I just don't know what to say or do.

[TZ]

48. Be thankful

That you haven't witnessed stuff like this first hand. I don't know what to do either. But I can't just let it go as many people around me seem to think I should do (my post is the one compared to Constant Gardener). There are a lot of people who don't believe me either...so its nice to post and get support...:)

[Cobalt Violet]

50. I've read your posts.

And I am thankful but so disturbed by this. I hope all this get blown wide open. Or is it already? ( I hope that question doesn't sound too weird but I don't watch TV and barely even listen to the radio.) Is this in the rest of the media?

[TZ]

54. No unfortunately

Malaria vaccine research is way too far down on the food chain in the media..besides I really don't want to subject my boss (or myself too) to the intense scrutiny that the media would bring. I want to figure out a quieter way to do this..

[Cobalt Violet]

56. I certainly understand your wanting to avoid intense scrutiny...

Especially media intense scrutiny. It sounds like that could be dangerous for you too. I hope you figure out a quite way to get more people away. Well I know and I didn't before so you are doing it.

[HamdenRice]

55. Seen the AIDS documentary called "The River" (I think)--Did polio vaccine spread AIDS?

I was very disturbed by your posts also and would like to offer my moral support.

The most disturbing drug experimentation in Africa and the most controversial I think was the polio vaccine trials in the Congo. First based on a Rolling Stone article and then a documentary of the same name, there are now very credible claims that the AIDS virus was spread in Africa by the use of contaminated polio vaccine prepared using Chimp tissue that was infected.

That's a horrible thought: that this global pandemic that has killed countless people was caused by medical experimentation on Africans.

[TZ]

57. Oh god..it's probably true

judging by what I went through/saw. Thanks for the support. My horrible experiences at NIH are what really motivated me to join DU actively. I really never thought that politics was something I would ever deal with directly. I was a naive child. I really did believe in the rationality and humanity of science. And my former boss (who is like a father to me) is the living representative of everything a good scientist is...brilliant, rational, honest and a true humanitarian. I also just read that its possible malaria infections can make HIV become more active..and so that makes me wonder more about the possible effects of the vaccine..they already were worried about it causing Lupus potentially...

[BlooInBloo]

47. pshaw! The TRULY evil thing is...

... that the Congressional Black Caucus won't let white folks join up.

What ahistorical amoral bigots some DUers can be.

[malaise]

49. Someone should document all the

experiments conducted on African people by people who hate us.

[yurbud]

51. I teach UNCLE TOM'S CABIN in lit class, and will include this in atrocities of slavery

[BlueStorm]

60. This is such an atrocious and gut wrenching part of history..

and from what I can tell is still going on... Geez, now I can see where Abasi on Trading Spouses can be so upset about white people.

This needs to be taught in our schools, not just 'romanticized' Black History month stuff, it needs to be part of the overall history curriculum. And if black people are being tested on, why not whites. Oh yea because whites are delicate and shouldn't have to go through this shit :sarcasm:

Blue

[midnight]

74. I'm sorry to have to weigh in here on surgical bastards. A white

bastard surgeon at Froedtert hospital in Milwaukee had surgical rights at Children's hospital. My baby had two six inch rods put in her foot. The bastard removed them without anesthesia. I was hysterical and pleaded for help and the doc and nurse did nothing. I called children's hospital and let them know the Doctor Gould removed her rods without anesthesia. Last I heard he is practicing in Florida. They move these fuckers around. I forgot to mention my baby is white.

[Beausoir]

76. Wow. Why did your baby need rods? Were you present when they were removed?

That sounds barbaric. I am NOT doubting you....but wish you could provide more detail.

Was the baby in the OR when the rods were removed? Were you there?

There is NOTHING worse than seeing a baby in pain.

[mzmolly]

77. It still happens to poor people today. Especially those who are dependent upon "the system."

Put on the tinfoil beanies and read on:

The horrifying medical experiments performed on impoverished people and their children all in the name of scientific progress. Many of these medical experiments were conducted on people without their knowledge, and most were conducted as part of an effort to seek profits from newly approved drugs or medical technologies.

Today, the medical experiments continue on the U.S. population and its children.

http://www.newstarget.com/019189.html

[JCMach1]

79. It wasn't just black people, medical experimetation

regularly took place.

J.M.Sims one of the 'fathers' of modern gynecology regularly experimented on black AND poor women to fix vesico-vaginal fistula. This was a huge problem for women after childbirth when a hole would develop between the rectal area and vagina after childbirth. These women would suffer infection after infection and lived in misery... He genuinely wanted to relieve their misery, but saw them clearly as SUBJECTS for his experiment. HE was also an unrepentant Confederate.

Also, one of the treatment for hysteria was the removal of the uterus, and/or the clitoris in this period...

Medicine was a horrorshow in the past. IT shouldn't come as a surprise.

[HamdenRice]

81. Irony: This is now a great benefit to black women in West Africa

There have been several articles in the NY Times about how western surgeons are doing these surgeries as charity in West Africa. Apparently, young marriage and child bearing is highly correlated with these fistulas. In the muslim parts of Nigeria, girls are married off and a young age, have children and durig child birth develop these fistulas. After that, their husbands and families shun them.

Western surgeons have been performing these surgeries for free in West Africa.

It is ironic that a technique developed so horribly on African women in America is now used to help African women in Africa.