Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Washington, the author of Medical Apartheid, is a medical researcher and writer who describes her job as that of being a “medical voyeur” (13). While working on Medical Apartheid, Washington was awarded a Harvard Medical School Fellowship in Medical Ethics, and she has held several other research fellowships throughout her career. Washington serves as a character in Medical Apartheid in the Introduction and Epilogue, where she offers personal anecdotes from her life that influenced the book’s writing.

Washington’s interest in medicine’s treatment of African Americans begins early in her career, when she is working in a teaching hospital in New York. One day, she opens a drawer to discover two forgotten medical files: one for a white patient, and one for a black patient. Whereas the white patient is described in compassionate terms, the black patient is described sparingly and with little empathy. While the white patient receives a kidney transplant, the black patient is denied a similarly necessary organ donation. Washington is horrified to realize the disparity in doctors’ approaches towards white and black patients. The shock motivates her to begin research onto the history of medical abuses of African Americans—a decades-long project that culminates in the writing of Medical Apartheid.