I’m sitting in probably my least favorite class of the semester (which is saying a lot since I don’t particularly look forward to ANY of my classes), and after going to a “departmental concerns” meeting right before this class started, and hearing the results of a feedback survey for another class on Monday, I’ve really…
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Bio-colonialism and the irony of western medicine
If y’all haven’t read a book by Harriet Washington you need to go buy one NOW. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation of Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present is a must read and her newest book, Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life itself—And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future, is being purchased as we speak.
She did an interview on Democracy Now that talks about specific elements of her new book, mostly about gene patenting. Doctors, hospitals, and corporations can utilize parts of your tissues to harvest genes and gene (cell) lines for medical research. There is a HUGE market for cell lines (Henrietta Lacks) and genes, and the patients they come from have almost always been un(mis)informed of what was being done with their tissues, and find themselves unable to sue the hospitals as the courts side with the efficiency of medical “advances.”
The whole concept is mind boggling, being able to patent a living thing. The court case that opened that door only wanted to patent a living thing (bacteria in this case) for the purposes of cleaning up oil spills, not for neo-colonialist medical experimentation. Worse than the fact that people have no control over their genes being patented and exploited for the monetary benefit of corporations is the fact that when a gene is patented, that means that only the patent holders can do research on that gene. Thus, no other researchers in this country can work with that gene (say for example an isolated gene that targets breast cancer) to make any further discoveries than the one patent holder.
Clearly, this isn’t about medical advances, just more greed and capitalism.
What was TOO ironic in the discussion in this interview has to do with natural medicine v. western medicine. Western medical doctors LOVE to tell indigenous people that they’re medicines are bullshit, quackery, voodoo, witchcraft, etc. and thus no one should be using herbal/plant based remedies or engage in alternative healing practices but should go to the doctor and get a prescription, because those prescriptions have a scientific base. Washington devotes a portion of her new book to talk about how American doctors go around the world to indigenous populations and local healers to learn their techniques, their plant based remedies, and what do they do?? Guess! These assholes, take that shit back to the US and then PATENT IT!
R.I.D.I.C.U.L.O.U.S! How are you going to go to another country, steal their medical practices, come back, patent it, extract the chemical properties, turn it into a pill, charge thousands of dollars for it as the newest “scientific” treatment, and then turn around and insult the very people you got this treatment from by calling them crazy and unqualified to treat people. WORSE–tell them that you now own the plant they were using to treat people in their communities, so they can no longer do what they’ve been doing for CENTURIES because some American or multinational corporation now owns the patent to a gene for a plant that DOESN’T EVEN GROW IN THE UNITED STATES!
This is all too mind numbing. It’s despicable, it’s criminal, and too many people are totally unaware of what is going on. Most of the people who’s gene lines are being used for profit are low-income and minorities, or they’re vulnerable populations abroad that have little access to medical care, and while American doctors are going over their to “help” them, they’re collecting genetic material to take back and harvest (WITHOUT INFORMED CONSENT) to then make a profit off of.
Please read these books. Please stay informed. Please read the forms you sign when you go to the hospital and if you’re not sure what they mean, take them to a lawyer. Our bodies are not to be farmed, and no scientist should be able to say that just because they figured out how a gene works (a gene from YOUR body), that they should be able to own it and have exclusive rights to study it, and profit off of those results.
What we (don’t) discuss in my MPH program
Three of my professors have mentioned the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. By mentioned, I mean just that: they’ve either said the words ‘Tuskegee Syphilis Study’ or painted some oversimplified, less severe, version of what actually happened. One professor said that the problems with this ‘incident’ were these doctors (no specification of their race) didn’t practice informed consent, and that the participants were “mainly low-income, uneducated minorities from rural Alabama.”
…
First of all, the US Public Health Service was involved in this study, and other professional groups and services (AMA and NMA) continued to support the study (design flaws and all) well into the 1960s. The “mainly low-income, uneducated minorities from rural Alabama” were ALL BLACK MEN, all 600 of them. Not only was there no informed consent, there were outright lies. These men were told that they were being treated for what they called “bad blood” but physicians who joined the study were told specifically NOT to treat the men for their syphilis, which could have been treated with penicillin. ALSO, these researchers actually prevented the men from getting treatment on more than one occasion. Yes, there were black health professionals involved in the study, but this was by and large WHITE doctors who purposefully targeted BLACK men in order to study the progression of syphilis until these men DIED from it. And they were targeted BECAUSE of their race. A clearly unethical study like that could only have been performed on black people, who, for all intents and purposes, they considered subhuman. It wasn’t an accidental oversight in design like my professor would have made it sound.
What he also failed to mention were the effects of untreated syphilis (which is particularly ridiculous for a professor who is also a medical doctor). According to the CDC:
In the late stages of syphilis, the disease may subsequently damage the internal organs, including the brain, nerves, eyes, heart, blood vessels, liver, bones, and joints. Signs and symptoms of the late stage of syphilis include difficulty coordinating muscle movements, paralysis, numbness, gradual blindness, and dementia. This damage may be serious enough to cause death.
Moreover, because these men went about their lives thinking they were getting treatment, they didn’t think twice about passing on the infection. Many of their wives contracted syphilis, got pregnant, and passed on congenital syphilis to their children. There is hardly anything written on the long term effects that their families faced as a result of this “study.” How does syphilis affect pregnant women?
The syphilis bacterium can infect the baby of a woman during her pregnancy. Depending on how long a pregnant woman has been infected, she may have a high risk of having a stillbirth (a baby born dead) or of giving birth to a baby who dies shortly after birth. An infected baby may be born without signs or symptoms of disease. However, if not treated immediately, the baby may develop serious problems within a few weeks. Untreated babies may become developmentally delayed, have seizures, or die.
The lack of critical discussions in these classes is unacceptable. There are so many students who had no basis for what the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was that these cursory overviews mean that the future public health workforce won’t even know what they don’t know. We’re getting a masters degree! We discuss theories, theoretical situations, policies (almost only from the perspective of what the laws say and what their intended to do as opposed to what they ACTUALLY do), some psychology, and a little bit of behavioral analysis. But the social indicators, the issues in multicultural health, the issues in LGBTQ health, are either completely passed over or talked about in some oversimplified, glossed-over, manner. Health disparities are only discussed as statistics. No history. No context. Like we just happened upon these problem. Like someone didn’t actively contribute to their existence. Like that someone to perform one of the most heinous studies (that we know of) in this country wasn’t the US Public Health Service, that we as the future workforce aren’t connected to.
After all of that, come to find out another syphilis study took place in Guatemala, RECENTLY! A couple of months ago. Not a single one of my professors even bothered to throw out a mention of this in class. They probably don’t even know.
This is bullshit.
Graduate School
Right so, I’m a couple of weeks into my master’s program and I’m feeling rather underwhelmed and not very analytically challenged. This has been a real eye-opener to how privileged I was to get the kind of education I did in my undergrad at Oberlin. It wasn’t acceptable to just merely do the reading and…
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like black butterflies 