What surprised me the most these past two weeks was seeing the long-term effects of medical

racism. It surprised me to see that people of color still have a lack of trust in our medical system.
However, when looking back and reflecting on this, it makes sense as to why this is the case.
There have been numerous gruesome medical experiments done on African slaves, such as Dr.
Sims experimenting on unanesthetized female slaves. Medical racism can be seen in the law as
well, through things such as the Eugenics Laws in the early 1900s. In addition, The Tuskegee
Study of Untreated Syphilis in African Males is a prime example of why people of color still
don’t trust the medical system. African males were lied to and not given the treatment they were
promised.
Throughout history, there have been many similar examples of people of color being “put
aside” when it comes to diseases, treatments, and overall healthcare. As Europeans colonized
Africa, they spread infectious diseases to new populations, undermined local medical traditions,
and gave inferior access to healthcare to the local populations, prioritizing the colonists. Every
action the European settlers took regarding healthcare was to protect themselves, disregarding
the people that were already there.
This disregard of people of color is also seen in America. Ebb Cade received injections of 5
mg plutonium without his consent. Although this may or may not have directly caused his death,
it likely at least indirectly called it. In addition, the doctors didn’t care about his consent. Doctors
also didn’t care about Henrietta Lacks’ consent to use her cells to study the effects of toxins,
drugs, and hormones on the growth of cancer cells. Although her cells did help to benefit society
through things like the Polio vaccine, they didn’t care about her own wishes or wants.
One of the main reasons why I was initially surprised by the fact that there was a lack of trust
in our healthcare system from people of color was that there have been many ethics boards and
codes formed to prevent things like these from happening again. The Codes of Ethics make sure
everyone in a certain field is behaving and acting in ethical ways. I believe that they do a good
job in properly governing their respective fields. For example, The Belmont Report, which is
used for research on human subjects, has three core principles of Respect, Beneficence, and
Justice. IRB boards ensure that research is ethical by approving or rejecting research studies
before they are started.
I thought that the formation of these things, in addition to the “modern movement” of equality
and justice for people of color, would make people of color start trusting the medical system
again. I truly believe that they would prevent more medical racism. However, it cannot take
away what was done, and I can understand why people of color don’t trust the American medical
system. Despite this, we have to ask what can be done to regain their trust? With all the new
policies and boards created, I don’t know what more can be done. I think it might just take a lot
of time and future generations for this lack of trust to fade away.