Carte Blanche

Harriet A. Washington

Language: English

Published: Jun 15, 2021

Description:

"Urgent, alarming, riveting, and essential." — Ibram X. Kendi
"Required reading to understand the context of this pandemic." — Jelani Cobb

Carte Blanche is the alarming tale of how the right of Americans to say "no" to risky medical research is being violated. Patients' right to give or withhold consent is supposed to be protected by law, but for decades medical research has been conducted on trauma victims—who are disproportionately people of color—without their consent or even their knowledge.
Harriet A. Washington, the author of Medical Apartheid, is again exposing a large-scale violation of patient, civil, and human rights. She reveals that the abuse first began in the military: In 1990, the Department of Defense forced an experimental anthrax vaccine on ground troops headed for the Persian Gulf. After a 1996 loophole to federal law permitted research to be conducted even on private citizens, particularly trauma patients,...