MARK YOUR CALENDAR

Sunday, Feb 28, 5:00pm EST, 2pm PST

**Register here on Eventbrite.
**Link here to watch on Youtube on day of event.

A Black History Month Online Book Release Talk

Harriet A. Washington, author of Medical Apartheid, is again exposing a large-scale violation of patient, civil, and human rights.

Did you know that 80 percent of corporate clinical trials are now conducted abroad, mainly in developing countries...far from governmental scrutiny and with a disturbingly casual approach to informed consent? A fact from Harriet Washington's new book Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Informed Consent that she will be discussing this Sunday, February 28, 5pm EST on line.

Carte Blanche is the alarming tale of how the right to say “no” to risky medical research is being violated in the U.S. 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.

"Urgent, alarming, riveting, and essential, Carte Blanche reveals that Americans, including African Americans, are still being medically experimented upon without their consent―yet again in research sanctioned by law. Harriet Washington’s powerful indictment of ongoing medical coercion unveils a gross violation of our human rights. It is vital reading at a moment when change is so necessary.” 

―Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist 
and Stamped From the Beginning

Harriet Washington interviewed on NPR, December 20, 2020 on "Race and The Roots of Vaccine Skepticism"

NPR's Michele Martin asked Harriet about some of the efforts being made to encourage people to take COVID-19 vaccines, about how Dr. Anthony Fauci has appealed to civil rights groups and spoken publicly about how a Black scientist helped develop the vaccine. Are these good steps? 

Harriet answered in part:

"I think this is a good thing to do because I think this vaccine looks as if it's going to be safe, efficacious -- just what we need. So anything that's done in terms of encouraging African Americans to benefit from it, too. I think this is a good step. However... if we don't make real, large steps toward addressing the inequities that cultivate distrust, then we're going to have to do this every time we have a new health initiative. That's a complete waste."

This will be one of Harriet's first talks about Carte Blanche which is being released on February 23. Revolution Books will have copies available at the bookstore and our online store in advance of her program.

Harriet A. Washington is the author of Medical Apartheid, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Washington has been a research fellow in medical ethics at Harvard Medical School, and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at the Tuskegee Institute. She lectures in bioethics at Columbia University. Her books also include A Terrible Thing to Waste and Infectious Madness.