Thread by @AfricanArchives

American medicine has been built upon the abuse of black people with no oversight.

I'll revisit a few cases of how Black people were abused in the field of medicine. #BlackHistoryMonth

A THREAD!

J. Marion Sims "the father of modern gynecology" purchased Black women slaves and used them as guinea pigs for his untested surgical experiments.

He repeatedly performed genital surgery on Black women WITHOUT ANESTHESIA because according to him, "Black women don't feel pain."

More than 8000 post black women in Mississippi and S. Carolina were given involuntary hysterectomies (removal of uterus) between 1920s and 80s when they went to see white doctors for other complaints.

These came to be known as 'Mississippi Appendectomies'

In 1800s, slaves were once thrown into burning hot pits by physicians seeking a cure for sunstroke. In 1822, Dr. Hamilton's used a slave named Brown as a subject...

Dr. Hamilton had a fire pit dug and placed John in the hot pit, covered him with wet blankets, and measured the effects of certain medications on Mr. Brown's body temperature and health.

reference: (Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, a Fugitive Slave)

In the 1800's, Dr. Francois Marie Prevost (Father of Cesarian Section) tried to perfect Cesarean sections using African women as subjects. His first successful birth, named Cesarine, was born in 1831 to a slave woman.

Experimentation was not limited to the living. There were "night doctors" who dug up corpses of the enslaved for medical inquiries.experimentation was not limited to the living... There were "night doctors" who dug up corpses of the enslaved for medical inquiries.

The Tuskegee syphilis Experiment: It began in 1932. In the syphilis study, doctors were trying to find out more about syphilis test subjects (impoverished African American men), and didn't treat them for syphilis even after they knew penicillin could cure the infection.

The infected men involved in the study were never made aware of their condition upon diagnosis and believed they were being treated for "bad blood

In exchange for their participation, the men received free medical examinations and burial insurance. They were never treated for the disease.

Oregon State Penitentiary Experiment. 1963-1971; Black prisoners were injected with radioactive compound called thymidine into their testicles.

The experiment was to test the effects of radiation on the cells of the testes & the doses of radiation that would produce changes or induce damage in the cells, the amount of time it would take for cell production to recover and the effects of radiation on hormone excretion.

At the time of the Oregon experiment, using prisoners as research subjects was an accepted practice in US. in this particular study it was interpreted by state officials as permitting an inmate to give his consent to a vasectomy, consenting to becoming an experimental subject

Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951 (HeLa cells) became one of the most important tools in medicine.Her cells became vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization and more.

In 1945, after a nasty accident, Ebb Cade a black truck driver was secretly injected with plutonium, a substance used to make nuclear bombs, to see the effects of a nuclear bomb on the body. The researchers went on to experiment on 18 other individuals.

For 6 months, he was held in the hospital thinking that he was being treated for his injuries. During that time, he was injected with more than 40 times the amount of plutonium an average person is exposed to in a lifetime.

The researchers collected bone samples and extracted 15 teeth to monitor the effects of his exposure. Ebb Cade grew suspicious of his broken-bone treatments and escaped from the hospital. He died from heart failure eight years later at the age of 61.

The Fenfluramine Study: In the 1990s, medical researchers gave a banned diet drug, fenfluramine, to dozens of African-American and Hispanic boys, aged 6 to 10, to see, whether or not the drug could help predict if the boys were likely to become criminals as adults.

The Pellagra experiment: Pellagra is an ailment commonly caused by a lack of vitamin B-13 in diet. The symptoms include skin lesions, sunlight sensitivity, dementia and ends in death. Millions of people in the US died from it.

Poor diet and vitamin B-13 deficiency was found to be the cause BUT these life-saving findings were not released to the public until 1935 because the majority of Pellagra induced deaths affected Black communities.

Scientists claimed that the cause of the disease was a toxin found in corn. In 1915, the U.S. Surgeon General ordered government funded experiments on Black prisoners afflicted with pellagra

German colonizers in Namibia, due to their interest in evolutionary theory and missing links executed inmates and decapitated them.

Herero women were required to remove all flesh from the heads to create clean skulls suitable for shipment for study in German Institutes.

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