Carte Blanche
The Erosion of Medical Consent
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Columbia Global Reports
Published:8th Apr '21
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
“Urgent, alarming, riveting, and essential.” —Ibram X. Kendi
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, the military has pressed ahead to impose nonconsensual testing of the dangerous and sometimes lethal blood substitute PolyHeme among civilians, quietly using it on more than 20,000 non-consenting victims. Since then, more than a dozen studies have used the 1996 loophole to give risky and potentially deadly drugs to patients without their knowledge, especially people of color, many of whom were already justifiably distrustful of racial bias in medicine. Carte Blanche is an exposé of a U.S. medical-research system that has proven again and again that it cannot be trusted.
“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
“Harriet Washington’s new book Carte Blanche, about unsanctioned medical experimentation on Americans, is the most unsettling and alarming work I’ve read in a long time. This issue is not a relic of history. It's a problem RIGHT NOW. This is required reading to understand the context of this pandemic.” —Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress
“A tight and informative historical overview of the ways informed consent has been evaded.” —Washington Post
“Medical ethicist and journalist Washington offers considerable evidence of deceptive and devious practices in medical research, which especially impact Black Americans.... An enlightening and well-supported examination of shocking malfeasance.” —Kirkus Reviews
“I want to thank Harriet Washington for her wonderful book. As a physician, it was really engaging reading for so many reasons. It encompasses all the human conflicts and challenges we face when working in a fundamentally unjust system.” —Olajide A. Williams, MD, MS, Professor and Chief of Staff of the Department of Neurology at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
ISBN: 9781734420722
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
150 pages