From The Ramparts

The Roots of Black ANtipathy Towards the US Medical Establishment

The Roots of Black Antipathy Towards  the US Medical Establishment

Junious Ricardo Stanton

The current global coronavirus situation and the roll out of SARS-CoV-2 injections has refocused attention on the reasons Blacks remain skeptical of the motives of the government, the health care system in general, Big Pharma in particular and why so many African-Americans are reluctant to take the COVID injections. The history and reasons for this skepticism date back hundreds of years to enslavement, through the “Jim Crow” apartheid era to the present.

During enslavement Black bodies were used without their consent for pleasure, experimentation and sterilization while they were alive and for study, autopsy, amputation and dissection (which all too often included mutilation) after they died. In addition to “experimenting” and surgery on live Blacks without use of anesthesia, whites frequently stole Black bodies from graves to autopsy and dissect (mutilate).

“The 19th century saw a boom in medical education, with the number of American med schools increasing from 4 to 160. This meant the legal supply of cadavers was suddenly insufficient and created demand for ‘resurrected’ bodies in both Britain (think: Burke and Hare) and the U.S. 

A group of free blacks in 1787 petitioned the city of New York to stop people from robbing bodies from their graves in the Negro Burying Ground but were unsuccessful. When the body of a white woman was discovered stolen a year later, New Yorkers took action and rioted.”  How Grave Robbers and Medical Students Helped Dehumanize 19^th Century Blacks and the Poor by Kristina Killgrove https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/07/13/dissected-bodies-and-grave-robbing-evidence-of-unequal-treatment-of-19th-century-blacks-and-poor/  

Black grave robbing goes back centuries; robbing Black cemeteries was so popular they called the grave robbers “resurrectors”.  Whites paid Blacks to pilfer the graves of newly deceased Blacks so they could be used for their experiments. They figured Blacks in a Black cemetery would be less suspicious. For hundreds of years individual “doctors” and later medical schools used Black bodies without consent or paying compensation to the families! “New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and Ohio all passed anti-grave robbing laws in the first half of the 19th century.  They didn’t work.  Even worse, the laws were particularly ineffective ‘for those groups generally targeted for such activity: African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and the poor.’” Ibid

During the early 20th century Rockefeller and Carnegie schemed to monopolize medical education, petrochemicals and pharmaceutical drugs. Using Pasteur’s “germ theory” Rockefeller pushed drugs made from oil and petrochemicals as the solution. Medical schools many supported by Rockefeller money embraced this notion of treatment.

Use of dead bodies (cadavers) became an integral part of 20^th century medical education and research, hence the increasing need for free cadavers. Over the years, live Blacks were also used for experimentation and study often unbeknownst to the subjects or their families. While the establishment of medical schools and hospitals increased often funded by oligarchs like Rockefeller, most of these facilities were closed to Blacks. Or they limited Black patients due to government sanctioned racial apartheid.

 The Flexner Report published in 1910 paid for by Carnegie (at the behest of Rockefeller) supposedly to evaluate and standardize US medical education was used by Rockefeller and Carnegie to eliminate competing disciplines and therapies such as: naturopathy, osteopathic medicine and homeopathy but the report also led to the closure of several pioneering Black medical schools. https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/medicaleducation/87171

In an attempt to remedy these conditions Blacks founded their own hospitals, medical colleges and nursing schools. Black morticians used their carriages and hearses as ambulances because white ambulances would not transport Blacks and there were very few places to transport them that would treat Blacks! The sting of this legacy lingers today despite the passage of civil rights and social welfare funding legislation that has mitigated many of these policies.

Here is a list of the historic Black hospitals: Freedman’s Hospital (now Howard University Hospital) was founded in 1862 as part of the Freedman’s Bureau and it was established to address the needs of the newly freed Blacks. It was and still is a federally funded facility. Provident Hospital founded in 1891 in Chicago Illinois by a Black Doctor Daniel Hale Williams to train Black nurses and interns. Other pioneering Black hospitals were: the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School founded in 1895 in Philadelphia by Dr. Nathan F. Mossell and Lincoln Hospital in Durham, North Carolina founded in 1901 by Aaron Moore and staffed by Black doctors from the Leonard Medical School at Shaw University the first four year medical school for Blacks in the US. Lincoln was also assisted by the influential Washington Duke a white tobacco magnate and industrialist (Duke University is named after him and his family). These ground-breaking facilities were all part of the Black hospital movement.

In addition to this sordid history, there is also a long tradition of disrespect, maltreatment and callousness towards Blacks by “medical professionals”, hospital staffs, pharmacists and other health care agents. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32032-8/fulltext Until these issues are addressed and rectified don’t expect Blacks to fully trust or embrace the health care system or their programs.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 8:40 AM