Copyright © 2009 Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center for non-profit editorial use

Here are some of Harriet Washington’s words from an interview she did in 2007 with Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! The Medical scholar and author of “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” commented on medical experiments done on Black children in the 1990s with “behavior problems”.

HARRIET WASHINGTON: Right, who are alleged to have behavior problems, yeah. And also on Black boys, specifically, who they think might have a genetic predisposition to violence.

But there’s no rationale for only looking at Black boys.

If you’re looking at predisposition for violence, you should be looking at all boys, and most American boys, of course, are white.

But it’s black boys who have been singled out for these very dangerous experiments, such as a fenfluramine experiment that took place right here in New York City between 1992 and 1997.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What was that about?

HARRIET WASHINGTON: Oh, they took, let’s see, from 110 to 36 Black boys and gave them fenfluramine, which is half of that Phen-Fen drug that was taken off the market, because it was cardiotoxic, caused heart problems.

They gave it to these boys in an attempt to see whether they would show some inclination toward violence. And they found the boys, because the boys were the younger brothers of children already in the juvenile justice system, so that was coercive in itself.

They used the juvenile justice system to identify boys. And again, the protocol, which I read, only indicates black boys are eligible. White boys were not eligible. ~democracynow.org

Here’s part 1 of the interview with Harriet where she explains most of the scientific advances in gynecology where made by experimenting on enslaved Black women.

To read the entire interview click on democracynow.org

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