MEDICAL APARTHEID REVISITED: PANDEMIC, POLITICS, AND PRIORITIES
In 2007, C-SPAN conducted an interview with Harriet Washington regarding her book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. The lead-in to the interview states: “From Thomas Jefferson exposing slaves to an untested smallpox vaccine to the Tuskegee syphilis study, Harriet Washington chronicles the history of medical research on African Americans.”
In 2020, President Donald Trump stood before a group of reporters to give his COVID-19 daily brief. There, he turned inquisitively to his Infectious Disease Czar, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, Ambassador-at-Large, who is the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and said “I see the disinfectant knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that, uh by injection inside or – or almost a cleaning? ‘Cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So, it’d be interesting to check that. So that, you are going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me.”
What are the ethical implications of this exchange for racialized minorities who are experiencing disproportionately higher rates of death from this pandemic? How should scholars, clergy, organizers, activists, students, concerned citizens receive this blatant message of proposed experimentation? In a moment when medical science is desperately trying to find a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus, the fact that the President of the United States would conceive and verbalize such a query is frightening. How does this present a chilling effect on testing? What are the multi-valent ways in which his rhetoric “others” ethnic minorities? Are there ethical solutions that involve empathy, transparency, expertise, and commitment, the four cornerstones of responsible crisis-management, that can assist caring Americans in building trust through the myriad political maneuverings and paralyzing bi-partisan priorities clouding the judgment of our national leadership?
August 5-7, 2020 the Vanderbilt Divinity School Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative will wrestle with the theme Medical Apartheid Revisited: Pandemic, Politics, and Priorities in its Leadership Academy. Registration is free and open to the public. You may join all or any portion of the virtual conference; however, advance registration is required.
Learn more: https://www.publictheologyracialjustice.org/leadership-academy