They ask why African Americans fear physicians. This thought crosses my mind as the current Covid-19 crisis arises. The last epidemic of my life time of this scale was Ebola and I remember attacking the culture of Africa and those who inhabited and the refusal to listen to Western Medicine.
The prefix “ex” comes from Latin meaning “out of “, while “periculum” means “danger”. These Latin terms create the word experiment which is meant ” to move from or out of danger”. The irony that lies in Medical experimentation lies in its definition. The experimentation of African Americans did nothing to to move them out of danger. I would use the Latin prefix “in” or “ad” which mean “in danger ” or “toward danger” So i will discuss medical adperiment or inperiments the word choice is yours. How do I know this ? Who would have known my three years of Latin would come in handy in a blog.
So what was actually the point of early on Medical Experimentation? I believe it was develop a mental inferiority of the Negro. If Phineas Gage was a Negro the phenomenon and the damage to his frontal cortex and recovery would be attributed to the concept that African Americans did not have access to most of their brain at the time in period, rather it was considered a miracle. Medical experimentation was a way to treat the African American the same way mice models are treated in a lab.
How can you argue ? The constitution was written with the same idea and mental set. Thomas Jefferson a scientist in his spare time induced cowpox into slaves hoping Edward Jenners cure was actually accurate. Yes, the Jefferson people who claimed was empathetic to slaves. Much of what the Western World knows about medicine was perfected on the African American.
The so called father of gynecology a name I refuse to mention. Mutilated African American women and continuously exclaimed that they felt less pain. So when you question the post partum mortality rate of African American women, remember the field was systematically set up on their mortality.
This is why African Americans fear physicians. And now I understand why my father called me naive when I discussed Ebola with him as a teenager. “Medicine or Medicide the ones who live contribute their survival to those who died “
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