Harriet A. Washington, author of the highly acclaimed book, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present," writes this New York Times Op-Ed on Africa and its fears of Western Medicine. If you've read her Medical Apartheid book and its detailed history on the medical abuses suffered by Blacks, the fears are certainly appropriate and not unfounded. Here's an excerpt from the op-ed: "Africa has harbored a number of high-profile Western medical miscreants who have intentionally administered deadly agents under the guise of providing health care or conducting research. In March 2000, Werner Bezwoda, a cancer researcher at South Africa’s Witwatersrand University, was fired after conducting medical experiments involving very high doses of chemotherapy on black breast-cancer patients, possibly without their knowledge or consent. In Zimbabwe, in 1995, Richard McGown, a Scottish anesthesiologist, was accused of five murders and convicted in the deaths of two infant patients whom he injected with lethal doses of morphine. And Dr. Michael Swango, ultimately convicted of murder after pleading guilty to killing three American patients with lethal injections of potassium, is suspected of causing the deaths of 60 other people, many of them in Zimbabwe and Zambia during the 1980s and ’90s. (Dr. Swango was never tried on the African charges.)" |
