Search the PSCC library catalog for books on these subjects.
Books and eBooks in the Library:
Medical Ethics by 
Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy by 
Medical Apartheid by
From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America's shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. Medical Apartheidis the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge -- a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government's notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed,Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers, and indeed the whole medical establishment, with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.
Human Trials by
Over fifty million people suffer from some form of autoimmune disease-multiple sclerosis, arthritis, lupus, and other afflictions in which the body attacks itself-none of them with a lasting cure. Susan Quinn has investigated the worlds where new autoimmune drugs are being developed: the research labs, the drug-company boardrooms, and the clinics where patients become "subjects" in the search for new medicines and treatments. Her exciting story is one of real people: fiercely competing scientists, ambitious venture capitalists, and, above all, anxious, sick human beings. She takes the reader inside these otherwise closed worlds, into the lead investigator's diaries, the tense closed-door meetings with investors, and the hopeful or heart-rending encounters in doctor's offices. Hers is the archetypal story of all medical research: the roller-coaster trip from the lab bench to the medicine cabinet, in which only a very few new drugs and treatments survive. Susan Quinn, author of the acclaimed biography Marie Curie, catches the hopes, triumphs, and crushing failures, the greed and the idealism in these dramatic human trials.
Read this related article about medical ethics in the U.S. and Canada:
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This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowThis 1998 BBC documentary on Henrietta Lacks and HeLa, The Way of All Flesh, won Best Science and Nature Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Directed by Adam Curtis.
