This sounds like an excellent talk, and a topic too rarely discussed.

5th Annual NYU Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Week

Harriet Washington
Author
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
February 7, 2011
5:30 - 8:15pm
550 1st Avenue
Alumni Hall B

“Washington, a journalist and former ethics fellow at Harvard Medical School, tells some harrowing stories, and claims that throughout the 19th century, medical schools disproportionately used blacks in live surgical demonstrations. In more recent times, she writes, they have been disproportionately enrolled in risky, nonbeneficial research in gynecology, oncology, surgery, pediatrics, infectious disease and genetics. While the worst excesses are a thing of the past, blacks are still ‘at greater risks than whites of being conscripted into ... research without giving their consent.’ ”

-The New York Times

Sponsored by:
The Office of Diversity Affairs
The Black and Latino Student Association
The Master Scholars Program in Medical Humanism

I should note that although overall medical history in America is a story of great successes, the racism explored in this talk is only one aspect of the darker side to medicine in America. Some time back I discussed another kind of medical horror in America in Forced Sterilization in America. It's important we know where we have gone wrong in the past so that hopefully we can avoid making the same mistakes in the future.