Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

4 reviews

mermaidread's review

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Slavery, Abandonment, Ableism, Abortion, Chronic illness, Colonisation, Death, Gaslighting, Forced institutionalization, Hate crime, Medical content, Medical trauma, Racism, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Child death, Sexism, Terminal illness, Blood, Body horror, Drug abuse, Genocide, Gore, Infertility, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Police brutality, Racial slurs, and Rape

corngod31's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

5.0

It's so much more than Tuskegee.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Rape, Medical trauma, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Hate crime, Genocide, Forced institutionalization, Child death, Chronic illness, Body horror, Emotional abuse, Death, Murder, Cancer, Blood, Racism, Racial slurs, Torture, Slavery, Sexual violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Confinement, Colonisation, Physical abuse, Mental illness, Gore, Classism, Child abuse, and Addiction

valkyriejmu's review against another edition

challenging dark informative sad tense slow-paced

4.0

This book is informative. It is also depressing AF. I added all the content warnings, but it serves a purpose, it's not just a warning of triggers. This is what has been done to African Americans throughout history in the name of science (in most cases) and I think it's important to know. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Body horror, Racism, Sexism, Medical content, Medical trauma, Torture, Death, Forced institutionalization, Injury/Injury detail, Slavery, and Kidnapping

bettyreads's review against another edition

challenging informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

 This book was difficult to get through because the way Harriet Washington delves into the history of the trauma, pain and suffering Black folks had to go through in the name of science and "progress" is just maddening, saddening, disgusting. The depth of the hatred white folks carried for Black folks and how they used their racism to enact genocide, horrible treatments and experiments to "help" folks because of the thought that this "medicine will benefit us all." When the reality is that it was for the benefit of whiteness under the guise of medical research and to prove Black inferiority and difference. The chapter Diagnosis: Freedom really highlighted how doctors even thought that enslaved folks getting free was causing them medical issues and that these white doctors could help by keeping them under bondage along with their enslaved and even after death, the experiments continued. The depth of the horrors just jeez. Folks that say why do folks distrust the medical system need to read this book because then you'll never question why Black and Brown folks don't. The importance of accessible health information is so key and this just reminded me of why I'm glad that I'm engaged in making sure folks do get the info they need when they don't have the ability to do so via the messy healthcare system we have in the U.S. currently. The issue of informed consent is so essential and that folks know that advocating yourself in any medical setting is crucial, ask all the questions, get a second opinion; they are working for you and we can't allow the historical precedent of pain and suffering to continue. This book came out on 2006, and the years of research that went into it is astounding and it's so interesting to think of the last 15 years and what that added to these stories because while doctors want to help there's no denying that there are folks across the board, government etc , that continue to do shady shit. Oh man could go on forever since I stayed up to finish this. I'm definitely going to be encouraging everyone to read this and just expand their understanding of what they might just know a bit about just like I certainly have. Glad to have discussed and reflected on this with book club this week 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Racism