informed consent. .. >> the patents -- >> oh. >> yes. >> um, i think the last question first is easier. patents should not be banned, but they should be much more strictly controlled. and, in fact, that's what most other countries do. they permit patents, but they do not permit as many patents as we do. they don't permit a 20-year

patent life which a company can easily extend by various, you know, manipulations. we have too many patted edges covering too many things -- patents covering too many things, and we allow them to persist for too long. they need to be tightly reined-anyone and controlled. a company holds a patent on a medication but they are making the medication at too high a price, $20,000 a year, or if they are not making the medication but holding the patent so nobody else can make it, then there is a regulation that says the government can step in and say you're not using this patent correctly, we're going to pay you a fee and give it to another company so they can make the drug at an affordable price, or they can actually use it and make the medication. this is in the law, it can be done, and countries like brazil and thailand do this.

we are reluctant to do this for medications. we'll do it for electronics and tv and things like that, but we don't do it for medication. we need to do that more. in terms of informed consent, what you're referring to as a sugar pill, doctors call it a placebo. one group gets the active ingredient, and the other group gets the placebo or sugar pill. those studies are not always appropriate, they should not always be done. be you have a life threatening illness or very serious illness and you're testing a medication for it and you're testing what you think is a better medication, you hope is a better medication, and another one already exists, you can't give the person the placebo. why? was that mines -- because that means they're not getting any treatment for this illness, and that's wrong. what you have to do is you can give one group the standard of care, the regular medication people are already using, and you give the other group the medicine you hope can be better.

placebos can't be used as frequently as they used to be used in the past. informed concept, of course, is something altogether different. that's when you don't tell someone they're in a study, or you don't tell them all the information. youyou should tell them about te study. or you don't share all the risks of the study and other information. and that is a, like i said, the serious problem here because it's not that that many people are affected so far, but we're not talking about a small number of people. the study that tested artificial blood only involved 720 people in the u.s. and canada. 720 people is not a lot of people. but at the end what did they find? they found be what they were testing caused more heart attacks and deaths than the regular standard of care. so you had people dying in the study who never knew that they were part of medical research, who never knew that they were in the study. and even worse, the very year

the study ended a new study was started. the research outcomes consortium study which involved 21,000 people in the u.s. and canada. 21,000 people enrolled in studies where no one tells them they're in research. what happens is they're trauma victims. so ambulances go to attend to them, sometimes take them to hospitals. instead of being given a standard of care, they're given experiment alamo call theties, a whole them, including things that are patented. anwhy do i point this out? because the patented valve is going to make money for someone if it's approved. and yet these people again, no one asked their permission. in many cases they're not even important. according to the protocol of the study, you don't even have to tell them they're in the study, and this is a very, very dangerous precedent for a country that has a long history of abusing people through the

use of studies that didn't use informed consent. it was bad enough when people did it and could be called rogues or renegades because there's nothing sanctioning it. now people are doing it, and they're protected under the law. the rationale is that trauma victims, you know, they've been in a car accident, they've had a gunshot wound to the heart, trauma's a very broad category, and the rationale is that we need to do the research. but these people are not in any shape to give consent. but that's not true. number one, no one has tested how many of these people are able to give consent. i talked to one of them. i found one and i'm not even a researcher, so i'm sure there have been other people that were able to give consent if someone had asked them. and the other problem is there's an assumption that the research is more important than the person's right. the fact is some medical research you just can't do. this may be a case where you say if we can only test it on people who are unconscious, then we can't test it right now. and you give that unconscious

person something that you know is going to help them. you know? perhaps we are turning our back on modality. that'll be very helpful. but until we find a way to test it about violating people's rights, i see that as a big problem. so i hope i answered your question. >> jonathan, did you want to respond? >> i'll just say one thing really quickly because i know we're getting towards the end here, but it's interesting because like now a lot of times when people call medical clinics or if they call the psychiatries clinic i used to work at in michigan, they'll talk to somebody about research before they even see a doctor or something like that. the relationship between especially medical academic centers and research right now is very close. almost -- i mean, some people are seeing researchers and, you know, while they're in a time of crisis before they're even getting treatment and stuff. so i think these issues are going to be increasingly important as we move forward because it's how a lot of academic centers are getting funding now, different kinds of research.

>> one of the things i've learned over the years is try to avoid drugs as much as you can. [laughter] try every other method that you can think of -- diet, whatever. [laughter] [applause] you know, there are times when you can't avoid it, you know? antibiotics. and if you can't avoid it, you can also ask questions like the questions harriet's -- first of all, you can ask how long has this drug been on the market, because if it just came on the market, we haven't tested it on enough people yet to know how safe it is. but there are always going to be side effects. almost every drug has side effects. and if you're the lucky one, you won't get it. but, you know, try to avoid it. doctors -- and they're all good intentioned -- will want to give

you something even if it's not necessary. and you have to decide yourselves what's necessary, how low do you want your cholesterol to be. [laughter] you know? so anyway, there's another -- >> another question. >> all right, thank you very much. >> hello. my father recently died. he had crucial felt jacob disease, cjd, and my question -- i didn't think it was here in america, i thought it was a myth. i didn't see any african-americans with it. so now i know. he's passed away, and i was just wondering since you all are in the health field, is there any study, any research, any information out there of how many african-americans are dying with this disease? because we've been going to workshops, we've been going to conferences, and there's not that many african-americans there. and i haven't seen that many --

i haven't seen much literature on it pertaining to african-americans. so just wanting to know do you know anything, any books, any researchers, anything out there? because i want a different perspective than what i've been getting, and i just want to narrow it down to african-americans and how it's hitting that population. >> well, i think jonathan actually is -- one thing i do want to say, though, is i spoke with laura -- [inaudible] who's a researcher at yale who studies it, and she told me it's her opinion that many cases of alzheimer's, dementia in this country are misdiagnosed. and it seems as if it's hard to get a handle on precisely how many cases there are. >> right. >> it isn't something that's not looked for routinely, so that means it's really hard to get good data on how many people have it. >> okay. >> let's exchange e-mails after the panel -- if thank you. >> -- and i can find out for

you. i do think there are related forms of enreceive lop think, i mean, i don't know the racial breakdown for cjd, but i do think there are other forms that have been studied more globally, and this might be data outside the united states. >> okay. >> is it a myth that mad cow disease doesn't exist in the united states? >> yes. [inaudible conversations] >> yes, i thought -- i didn't think it was here. of when they diagnosed my father with mad cow disease, i thought what in the world? i'm thinking, i'm like, mad -- are you serious? and i didn't think it was real. and then when i started looking up, no black people. okay? >> i ask a question about that, i'm very sorry for your loss. you know, my condolences. what are you looking for when you say you want information about black people? >> because -- [inaudible conversations] >> with regards to mad cow. >> because you, because it's already rare and you don't know

anything, okay? >> uh-huh. >> and then you find out when you do look, when i do go on the web site, it's all white people. so i'm like, okay, is it hitting black people? do black people catch it? >> we all get -- >> i know. but this is the stuff that -- you asked me -- >> yeah, no, i'm just trying to -- >> what i want to know is how with cancer you may be able to find out how many people have cancer, you want to know about your population. does it hit african-americans differently than it hits caucasians or chinese. i just want to know how is it affecting us as black peoplement because it's so rare by itself, and then on top of that you don't see that many african -- when we've gone to these workshops, i can count on one hand how many of us are there. so i'm like, damn, why did my daddy have to get it? how did he get snit so i wanted to know is there information out there, how many black people do actually catch it, any other minorities get it. i just want to know.

>> thank you. >> yeah. well, you know, without data it's hard to know, you know? >> uh-huh. >> but the fact that it's not very visible among black people as you already suspect, that means nothing, you know? it's recently the case that these will be written about at length. in fact, you often see language like, um, very prevalent in this group of people. >> uh-huh. >> which i may be but sometimes i've looked into it and found out it's more prevalent in african-americans. >> is it just not being documented? because you're right, the way to diagnose it is very -- my family pushed, and we kept pushing. we're even getting the death certificate changed. >> good for you. >> so we're different. i'm wondering how many families are being misdiagnosed and how many more african-americans do have it. >> right. >> that's what i was wonder, in the health field, are african-american doctors talking about it? is there even an interest? is there research out there? >> well, misdiagnosis is, you know, certainly likely a

problem. it's also the case that african-americans particularly if they're poor are less likely to have access to health care. and so when you're talking about this kind of rare disease, it sounds like your family poured a lot of time and resources into keeping your father with you and lots of people don't have access. so that could be part of the reason why we don't have data that might yield some of the answers that would be, i think, both intellectually and emotionally important for you and your family. >> thank you very much for your question. i think we have time for one more question. questioner? >> yes, thank you. i got the last one. i've already been coached to keep it simple and quick. i'm going to do so. dr. meltzer, i was listening to your presentation, and you mentioned something about in the '50s it was primarily the schizophrenic diagnosis was primarily for a white population. then all of a sudden, and you used the term out of the blue, it became something that was popularized for african-americans. and i'm wondering, i wasn't quite clear whether you were

saying that when you say out of the blue whether it was they genuinely ignorantly started to make this misdiagnosis, or were they more like being dumb like a fox? in other words, needing a population that they could study, evaluate and do some different kinds of treatment with modalities? and my last part to the question is, is it coincidental that there were certain types of controversial therapies like shock therapy and, you know, in that sense that seemed to occur at the same time, and is there any connection. thank you. >> i'll just say very quickly because i know we're short on time that part of the point -- thank you, it's a terrific question. part of what i think we're all studying, i don't want people to leave or here and think like, oh, man, there's no hope for any of us, you know? like whatever. so it's more when you spend a lot of time studying particularly issues about race and ethnicity in the medical system, on one hand i think -- and hopefully you've heard this from this panel today, there's a

very genuine need for people to get information. doctors want to help people a lot of times, but a lot of times there are these moments where the racialization of the system, the bias, the racism of the system becomes more apparent than others. and what happens then is not so much all of a sudden there's this plague of insanity in the black male population. it's that the frames around illnesses, the way we define illnesses change in ways that have some things to do with biology but other things to do with politics. so what i argue in my book is the reason people started seeing black men as being crazy is because they were afraid of them. they were in the streets protesting and all this kind of stuff and this language and insanity became a way of quite literally incarcerating black men but not having to take seriously the threat that they were posing to the white political order. that in a way it was a very political -- but to get back to alandra's quote, it was health being politicized in the name of

maintaining the status quo. and so part of what i think we're saying is that it's important to get treatment, to get help, to talk to your doctors. but also to be aware always of the politics of the health care system that can kind of shape those kinds of disparities. >> well, we're at the end of this wonderful conversation, and i really appreciate the audience participation in this because you helped raise the level of the conversation. let's give a hand to our panelists. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> host: harlem book fair, the langston hughes auditorium here at at the schomburg current, you were just watching a panel on science and health. coming up next, professor e.r.

ship will be talking with dr. carl hart about drugs in society. his book is called "high price." he appeared on our "after words" program, but he'll be taking calls after his presentation with us here at our stand-up site on the stage here in the langston hughes auditorium. but now we're pleased to be joined by dr. harriet washington who was one of the panelists on the science and health panel, and we've got the numbers up on the screen, a lot of callers already lined up. we're going to get to those calls after one question. dr. washington, there were a lot of politics involved in this discussion. why is that? >> guest: well, first of all, i have to point out that i'm not a doctor. >> host: i apologize. >> guest: no problem. because medicine has parallelled the politics of this country. it has grown and changed in the same way that our political system has changed. and we often find abuses in the medical sphere that directly parallel abuses in the political

sphere. when we had enslavement as the law of the land, there was medical enslavement. when segregation was the law of our land, we had a lot of medical segregation, and today we are still struggling with disparities in our health care system as in our research system. >> host: well, harriet washington is the author of two books. her most recent is called "medical apartheid," i'm sorry, "deadly monopolies." in fact, she won the 2007 national book critics circle award for her first book. and now it's your turn to talk with harriet washington. we're going to begin with tyrone in d.c. hi, tyrone, you're on booktv live. >> caller: hello, ms. washington. i appreciate, i appreciate what you have done in terms of talking about some of the medical efficacy issues that

doctors deal with on a daily basis, and when you, you have a -- [inaudible] onset illness, some doctors will confer with some of their contemporaries through nih and some of the other medical institutions. and once they come up with a simplistic idea of let's say paralysis or a spinal cord injury, they're very, very hesitant to make a definitive diagnosis even after doing numerous amount of tests and then going, going to have their colleagues look at it and come back with a consensus of what could this possibly be. and i've gone through this for the last eight years. and i was wondering if you had any comments about doctors -- >> host: thank you, tyrone.

harriet washington? >> guest: i'm afraid i could not hear some of your question, tyrone. i understand that you are struggling with a spinal cord injury? >> caller: yes. >> host: and he is gone. oh, there he is, he's still there. go ahead. anything that he said that you wanted to respond to? >> guest: well, spinal cord injuries are notoriously difficult as i don't have to tell you, and they are very, very difficult, life threatening injuries, but it's important to remember that a great deal of research and progress is being done. there's some research being touted in stem cells, but that's not the only advances. the other advances have to do in neurological process the cease. i really urge you to speak with your physician, and if you -- if he's part of a team, perhaps one strategy might be to ask for a meeting of the team so that you could speak with them about your own concerns about the treatment and your own hopes to find out

realistically what might be done that is not already being done, and i do wish you the very best, tyrone. >> host: he also brought up nih. have you looked into nih when it comes to public health and science at all? >> guest: yes, i have. however, unfortunately, a lot of the investigation i've done into nih has to do with things like alzheimer's research and mental health research, so i'm afraid i don't have any particular expertise in your area. however, i do know that the nih is a bit of a mosaic. you've got very, very dedicated people there who are working really hard, and unlike most organizations, you also have a few bad apples. so that the nih, i think in general, is doing a very good job, but the real question is always a part of a political one, how do you allocate the resources? they have a finite amount of money, and deciding where that research money is going to go is always a struggle, and it's always a political struggle as well as a medical one. so there are patients' groups, but you might want to associate

yourself with if you want to see more money going for the kind of injuries that you are concerned with. >> host: next call comes from polly in amityville, new york. polly, please go ahead with your question. >> caller: hello. thank you i've been listening, and i'm thrilled to say that i like the -- [inaudible] that was going on. i really can identify with some of it. i'm a nursing assistant, and i can say to you that racism -- [inaudible] and i just want to say one thing before, that when i came to the united states and see that this was a place that i could work and enjoy doing something that i loved, because working with the elderly for me is not -- [inaudible] it's a cultural thing. so when i came to this country and saw that there was a place to do that, it was a welcome

thing for me. i tried to get in the field and learn everything about elderly care. so -- [inaudible] that i could take as a black person helping other races that would discriminate against me tell me take your black hands off me, don't serve me food because you're black. i remember a man hit me with his cane because i was black. >> host: all right, polly, i think we got the point. harriet washington? immigrant, finds racism in the medical community. >> guest: yes. both the status of being an immigrant health provide or and being an african-american can sometimes work against you. discrimination is real in this profession as it is in other professions. there's also strength in numbers. i would strongly urge you, polly, to find an organization

of people in your area of expertise. you know, if you're a nurse, i would say try the black nurses' association. if you don't have a black organization, then ally yourself with whatever organization exists, because it's not going to be the first time they've encountered this issue, and they can help you. for people who have the money, the other option is an employment lawyer, but that can become expensive, and it's not really the answer for most people. so i would strongly urge you to ally yourself with a professional organization who can get behind you and help you to find the employment that you are entitled to. >> host: harriet washington is the author of two book, "deadly monopolies" and "medical apartheid" which won the 2007 national book critics circle award. the next call comes from michael in alabama. >> caller: thanks bigtime. although i'm a white male gentile so-called able-bodied person from the southeast, two mental illnesses that i had, ironically after becoming a

christian although i don't blame christ himself for them, and they came from -- [inaudible] and being born with very mild epilepsy and a very rare autism called asperger's syndrome. for those of you out there who have never heard of it, think of the edith bunker character and beverly archer's character on nbc's "mama's family" during the '80s have made me -- >> host: michael, what's your question for harriet washington? >> caller: okay. with even people with even more serious medical problems within united way agencies, usually in art therapy and music therapy, i'm really concerned about what may happen to them with corporate patents and with efforts to repeal obamacare or some mistakes within obamacare itself and so forth. i have questions about three concerns. does obamacare cover mental

illness, and if so, what changes does it make with federal or state government or private for-profit insurance companies or nonprofits like blue cross and blue shield. >> host: you know what? michael, i apologize we're going to have to leave it there so we can get some more callers in. harriet washington. >> guest: hi, mike. good question about obamacare and mental illness. obamacare represents a huge step forward in the treatment of mental illness, but what's interesting is mental illness in is very like physical illness in the terms of things that separate people from great care. one is insurance, he's done exactly what i think should have been done, mandating when he can that people who can't afford to pay for insurance get it and people who cannot afford to get it receive it. and to divorce it from employment is a brilliant move. it was a very strange relationship anyway. most countries don't subscribe to it. so that's very, very important for mental health care because

many people who have mental health issues find that they are linked -- they are chained to their jobs. they couldn't change jobs for obamacare because they couldn't afford to lose their health insurance. and some forms of mental illness, as you know, can make it difficult to find employment. this will offer relief to these people, freeing them in many ways they hadn't before, so obamacare's going to be a huge positive for mental health. on that score only. >> host: harriet washington, how did you get boo this field in. >> guest: -- into this field? >> guest: like a lot of medical writers, i was a frustrated physician. was premed in school, really wanted to become a doctor but found i was too easily swayed and distracted by every shiny idea that came along, so i became a writer instead. is and i've had a lot of fun undergoing the training that i wanted to do. i went to harvard medical school where they had special programs to train journalism fellows in being really good medical

writers. and also, you know, i had great jobs being science editor. so that was good. but i think my real grounding came right after graduation from college when i worked in hospitals at a variety of jobs, a lab technician, running a poison control center because there you saw what was really happening like in an unvarnished way, and the people who worked there for whatever reason were just very open in sharing with me their own misgivingsing about the health care system and the kind of care that they felt constrained to give, you know, things they wanted to give a patient but found they couldn't because of insurers. or i saw for myself some racial imbalance in the way people were treated. it was only an impression, but i wanted to get more. >> host: we've been talking with harriet washington who was part of the previous panel here at the harlem book fair, the 15th annual. the next panel is ready to begin. professor e.r. ship will be talking with dr. carl hart. >> my name is patrick oliver s

and i -- [inaudible] youth organization to, community organization that is designed to empower young people through literacy, and the community as well. but our signature initiative is our encouraging our sons to read project. today you are in for a wonderful conversation between two individuals. the title of the conversation is the road to discovery, and that conversation will be mod candidated by e.r -- moderated by e.r. ship who is a professor of journalism, and she will be speaking with dr. carl hart who is a neuroscientist. so enjoy the conversation. >> hello, everybody. [applause] okay. is everybody hearing me? hi, how are you? dr. hart, you're laying a really heavy one on us here with this book, "high price." there's a lot i want to talk to

you about. and, hopefully, raise some of the issues that people in our audience are also curious about. let me start with the title itself. what is the high price to which you refer, and who is paying that price? >> first of all, i just want to say thank you all for coming out. i know you all could be doing something on this hot day in new york. so thank you all for joining us. so "high price," what's the title? some of you all may have heard or seen some of the sort of publicity around the book. i am the first tenured african-american scientist at columbia. and when that's the case, one must pay a price. and in the book i'm saying that the price is too high. it's a hell of a toll that it takes on one, on someone, and

folks who are coming up subsequently, i'm trying to show folks how we can decrease the price so we can produce other brothers and sisters who look like me if they want to become scientists. so the book is trying to describe this. that's one. two, when we think about what we're doing in this country, i study trucks, -- drugs, by the way, study drugs of abuse. and then when you think about what we're doing in the country in terms of drug policy, some of you all know if you have been living anywhere other than under a rock, you know that our drugging policy disproportionately impacts negatively black folks, particularly black men. and what i'm saying in terms of drug policy is that the price is too high for our community. so high price is a play on my personal story, on my science and on drug policy. >> well, that is one of the

things i thought you were trying to get us to think about this in two ways. in many ways you say that black boys are paying a high price for what you see as misdirected drug policy. you say that these policies character blacks disproportionately and that they derive, if i understand it correctly, from in this obsession with drugs like cocaine, opiates, marijuana that are based on racist assumptions, bad science, bad policing and media hype. do i have it right? >> that's right. >> and i was struck by this passage in the book where you say, and let me find it here, um, give me one second.

okay. i explain that my 20-plus years of drug research experience has taught me many important lessons, but perhaps none more important than this: drug effects are predictable. as you increase the drug dose, more potential for toxic effects. black boys and men's interaction with the police, however, are not predictable. i worried all the time about the very real possibility that my own children would be targeted by law enforcement because they fit the description of a drug user or because someone thought they were under the influence of drugs. too often in these cases the black youngster ends up dead, and you mention among them trayvon martin. what can you tell us about that? you said you would prefer to have your sons interact with drugs than with law enforcement. >> so i should give you all some

background. so i've been studying drugs for 23 years now. part of my research today is that i actually bring people into the laboratory, and i administer drugs like cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine. and i study the effects to see exactly what they do and what they don't do. of course, we pass all of the ethical requirements. now, as i point out in this passage, i've learned many important lessons. some of those lessons often conflicts with what you all have been told. the first thing that one of the things that i try and do in "high price" is to show the reader how they've been lied to. they've been lied to a range of sort of folks including the government, including scientists, including law enforcement. a number of people about drugs. and so as the passage indicates, the thing that i know about

drugs is that drug effects are predictable. that means that we know when bad effects are more likely, we foe when positive effects are more likely. now, when we think about the environment that we have created, all of us, we've all participated in creating this environment. the environment that created the 100 to 1 disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine in cha we treat -- that we treat crack cocaine more harshly than powder cocaine. we all said that drugs were destroying our community. we all believed that. that's a lie. drugs were not destroying our community. unemployment was out of control before crack cocaine was introduced. but we all accepted the sort of easy answer, and we created this environment such that we went after crack cocaine with such intensity, such intensity that law enforcement thought that they had license to come into

the community and do whatever they would to your children, to my children, to me and so forth. and so in the book i try and, plain how this all happened -- explain how this all happened and how this is currently going on. so when i say i i prefer to have of my kids interact with drugs as opposed to law enforcement, i know how to keep my kids safe with drugs. there are a number of things that we know how to do with drugs in order to decrease the harm. and i describe some of these things in the book. but i don't know how to keep our kids safe with police officers, particularly when you have these young males interacting with our young males. i don't know how to do that because the test roan and the sort of -- testosterone and the egos get out of control, and you end up with things like trayvon martin, with the kid who was killed in the bronx. , and so all of this in the name of drugs being so awful, i'm here to tell you people drugs

are not the enemy. we know how to do these things safely, we know how to keep people safe with them. >> let me pick up on that point. particularly in a community such as harlem and throughout new york city and throughout urban america to say that drugs are not the problem is kind of difficult for us to swallow when we look around us. and the things we see seem to be associated with the use of drugs, the abuse of drugs. so tell me more about why we shouldn't be so upset about drugs as a problem. >> well, i want to make sure that i'm clear and i'm not trying to be reckless here because i'm not reckless. you don't get to be in my position and be be reckless, that just doesn't happen. particularly looking like i look. you don't get to be reckless. [laughter] prison -- [applause] >> so what i mean when i say that drugs are not the problem, i mean that -- let me give you some thattist you cans.

when we think about drugs like cocaine, 80, 90% be of the people who used cocaine including crack cocaine, 80, 90% of them don't have a problem. they go to work. they go to work, they pay their taxes, they are responsible individuals. same is true for other drugs. but you do have a small percentage who have problems, 10, 20%. and that should be taken seriously. but if the vast majority of the folks don't have a problem, that tells you that it's not the pharmacology of the drug, it's some other things. and those other things, we know what they are. lack of skills, lack of jobs, a wide range of things that, you know, we try to work on in the 1960s and '70s, the great society. the things that the society has abandoned. all of those things. that's why i tell my perm story

so you -- personal story so you all could know that i'm not perfect. lord knows i'm not perfect. i sold drugs, i did drugs, i did all of those sorts of things. not as a badge of honor. i'm not saying this as something to be proud of. i'm saying this so that you all know that i made mistakes, and i have done okay in this society. i pay taxes. in fact, the guy in the white house has done marijuana, has done cocaine. the guy before him, george bush, done marijuana, widely suspected of doing cocaine. the guy before him, bill clinton did marijuana. >> he didn't inhale. >> no, no, no, he said he didn't inhale. [laughter] he said he didn't inhale. but the point is that those guys are more typical of drug users than what you have been told and what you think. and that's not to say that people don't have problems, because there are people who have problems, and that's a small percentage. and we know how to deal with those problems. and the way we deal with the

problem is not our current drug policy, because our current drug policy ends up with too many of our folks in jail. >> i'm going to pick up on that again, but i wanted to stay with trayvon for a minute because we know that even outside here on these streets today there are all kinds of protests all over the country reacting to the verdict of acquittal in the george zimmerman case a week ago. thousands of people are apparently protesting, and on the eve of that protest yesterday gave an emotional speech where he said he could have been trayvon. and he talked about the difficulties of being a black male. he offered some sense of solution, but i'd like to ask you, dr. hart, what do you think

of what he said about identifying the problems that black males have but more importantly, the solutions he hinted at? >> well, i have to be really careful here because there are a hot of people -- a lot of people who support the president who i want to buy this book -- [laughter] now, on the one hand i think the president deserves props for coming out and saying something. he must be under tremendous pressure from both sides. and so i appreciate the pressures under which he, which he has to deal. on the other hand, one of the things that -- i listened to the speak carefully, and he gave evidence of the racial discrimination, two pieces of evidence he gave.

the december proportionate -- disproportionate number of brothers and sisters in the system, criminal justice system, and the disproportionate numbers of people who are being arrested for drugs. if you look around the country, black people are four, seven, eight times more likely to be arrested for marijuana even though they don't use marijuana more than white folks. we look at the crack cocaine, powder cocaine disparities, we know that 85, 90% of the people who are arrested for crack cocaine and prosecuted are black even though they don't use crack cocaine at rates higher than white folks. so the pieces of evidence that the president gave for racial discrimination is supported by a plethora of data. yet now i want to say that i understand that he hasn't thought this through completely,

but there was no sort of comment on drug policy and proposed solutions. in "high price" i propose what the country could do to deal with this issue of the high numbers of black boys and men being arrested. and by the way, if you're arrested, you get a drug felony and so forth, the likelihood of you getting a job is, it's very low. so one way to deal with this jobs situation or the, this impediment is that you stop giving them this blemish. and in "high price" i argue that we should decriminalize all drugs. now, decriminalization is not legalization. decriminalization drugs still remain illegal. legalization is what we're doing with, oh, alcohol. i'm not proposing that. because with decriminalization if you sell drugs, you still are subjected to the same penalties

as you were before. but given that 80% or more of our arrests for drugs in this country are for possession, i'm arguing that when people are caught with possessing drugs, they get the equivalent of a traffic violation. and not a criminal offense. this isn't new. we already do it in some states with marijuana. this isn't new. portugal has decriminalized all drugs. they have done it since 2001. it works. so i was disappointed at some point, some level that there was no comment on drug policy when we know drug policy is the reason why these folks are caught up in the criminal justice system in the first place. >> well, the president said that he wants to find a way to show black young men and boys that

they are valued in this society. how can he do that? >> now, i didn't want write on this subject -- i didn't write on this subject, i should tell you, in terms of the way the president can do that. one of the things that the president did, and this is important, the president corroborated the reality of black boys and men by telling the stories of him walking down the street or in the elevators and women clutching their purse, or you're walking down the street, and you hear cars clicking their locks and so forth. of course, we all have that experience. that's a small slice. i think that it requires more, particularly when we think about the things that really matter in this country. if you want to validate black boys and black men, make sure

that they can support be their family, make sure that they have jobs, make sure that they feel like men. that's the most important way to validate someone. i mean, when you have mediocre white boys working -- and they should be, by the way -- but you have to be extraordinary to be a black boy, black man, something's wrong. and this is what we need some comment, we need some action on. >> well, these days you get around in pretty rarefied academic circles and some policy circles. but i think our audience might like to hear a little bit more of something that you alluded to earlier. you clearly did not grow up as a cosby kid with claire and cliff huxtable as your parents. you grew up in south florida. tell us about your rocky start in life and what it was that put

you on a course to get to where you are now. >> so as i said, this book is a combination between a memoir, science book and a policy book. i told the memoir portion because, not because i want you all to know more about my personal business. believe me, the great deal that i revealed in this book caused me a great deal of anxiety. i didn't tell it for that reason. i told the personal part because i know people learn by example. but i have to add science so you don't make the mistake, because you can make some real mistakes by anecdotes. i know people make mistakes, and i wanted the cast of kids who were coming up after me to see how, to provide a road map, if you would, how to do this. i wanted policymakers to see a road map, how you do this with people who were not cosbys. so the thing that kept me

plugged in, into society even though i was engaged in petty crimes and that sort of thing, the thing that kept me plugged in was basketball, high school basketball. i played high school basketball throughout. i had to maintain a certain gpa, a 2.0 tost in school. i did, and i also -- it allowed me to graduate. i had five sisters, i had a grandmother who was strong. they kept me on the path that was as straight as possible even though i deviated. but i didn't want to disappoint them too much. i had a guidance counselor when i didn't get a basketball scholarship who had me speak with the military. i went -- i ultimately went into the air force where i began my college education and where i began to get a real education because i left this country. i had to go over to england in order to have my experience here with racism and my experience as a black man be with corroborated.

so i learned how to develop a critical analysis of this country by being over in england. i had mentors, multiple mentors. i mean, i had mentors in the streets, and i had mentors also in the classroom, a wide range of mentors. this notion that you have only one mentor, that's crazy. i had multiple mentors. i had drug dealers who were mentors, i had professors who were mentors, a wide range of mentors. and i took from each what i needed. in fact, one of those mentors told me that i had what it takes to get a ph.d. and so that's how i ended up going to graduate school. [applause] granted, i didn't go to graduate school in harlem, i went to graduate school in wyoming. [laughter] and that's a story. [laughter] that's another story. i talk about that story.

>> you said that you had an abundance of adolescent cockiness that created risk blindness. i think a lot of participants can understand that -- parents can understand that and know that when they think of their own sons in particular. why is it important, do you think, for readers to know that your bad acts, quote, had nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with street credibility? >> so one of the things we have to ask ourselves is that if the drug policy isn't working for us, well, why is it, why does it continue to persist? why do we continue to have this bad drug policy? drug policy add it is today -- as it is today and our myths about drugs actually works for politicians because when you go to your politicians with a problem, the only thing they can do really is pass the law or something of that nature.

and if you know or you think the problem is drugs, you can pass laws that restrict drugs, you can increase the number of police officers. that's easy to do. and so you don't have to look at any further, you don't have to look any further for any of the answers. now, the reason why i point this out in the book is that drugs were not the problem is because i didn't want people to stop and think that they had the solution. drugs are easy scapegoats, and they are rarely the problem. i wanted folks to understand what the issues are tar going on with young -- that are going on with young people whether they are coming up in my era or whether they're coming up in the current era. i mean, there is -- i, too, had, i needed the approval of my peers. and so as a result, i engaged in

some behaviors that were not productive and certainly could have gotten me in trouble. but they had nothing to do with drugs. they had everything to do with risk taking that adolescents do. so as a society if we can keep adolescents safe by making sure that the activities in which they engage in, these risk-taking activities, we can decrease the harm as much as possible and understand that the risk taking is normal be. and it's not some extreme aberrant behavior. so i try and show how all of these sort of things that i was doing, they were normal in the context. and if we understand the context, we might be able to keep people even more safe. >> so that argues, i suppose, for more proactive involvement in our student, in our young people's lives, the grown-ups in the communities need to do more,

not wait for law enforcement to be the answer to whatever it is our children are doing. we need to provide some alternatives for them. >> yeah. so if you ever wait for law enforcement to serve, to solve your problem, you have already lost. law enforcement has no training in pharmacology to talk about drugs, no training in behavioral science. their training is to go at the criminals and lock them up. >> and sometimes there are presumptions about those people they're locking up based on this notion that black people in particular are more likely to be involved in drugs and other crimes. so jump on them before they have a chance to act seems to sometimes be it. let me point out one of your experiences. you earned your ph.d. in neuroscience in 1996, and you

athat year you were the -- you say that year you were the only black male in this country to earn that degree. you went to the national institutes of health to do some research. tell us about that experience you had where you came face to face with assumptions that were made about you as a black male? >> you're describing an experience that i had in which i was subjected to an impromptu lineup. now, we all have these kind of experiences, and i am, i'm kind of reluctant to even talk about it publicly. these kinds of things, because you all could tell me your stories. but this particular story i was going, i was on the nih campus, national institute of health campus. it is the premier medical campus in the country. i was doing research for my dissertation, my ph.d.

dissertation, and at the time i was so excited about some finding that i was getting in the lab. i had just come back from the bank, one of the bank buildings -- one building contained the bank, and my building was near the bank, and so i was walking towards my building. and two police officers, they were undercover police officers, were staring at me, and one black and one filipino. and i could not figure out why they were staring at me, and so i thought, well, maybe, you know, they're interested in me romantically. [laughter] but that wasn't it. and they said that, well, there's been a robbery, can you help us out? and then me being oh, of course, absolutely, man, what can i do? and so i agreed to help 'em out x. they said, well, the perp who

did the robbery -- the person who did the robbery was wearing or looked like you. we thought -- so -- and now i'm shocked. i had my name tag on, my badge and bank statement and so forth. and so they asked if i'd mind being subjected to an impromptu lineup where the person who was robbed could point me out or identify me or exonerate me. and so i, i didn't see that i had a choice, so i did. and then about 20 minutes later they told me i could go. but being a psychologist, i know too how unreliable lineups are. and so afterwards i was really angry about this thing. but not knowing what to do, i was in training, i was trying to get my ph.d., i was trying to keep my nose clean, i was trying

not to be involved in any sort of controversial acts or -- so in the end i ended up doing nothing. but those kind of things happen. and i have many more stories i didn't share in the book because i didn't want to bore the reader because you all know these stories, but that's why. >> well, you ended the chapter which you call requested "still just a nigger." it infuriated me. but that's when i realized my son would soon face a world where even in the most clear cut situation someone with our skin tone could still be seen as a crackhead just because he dressed a certain way or to use the language of an earlier wave of drug hysteria, a negro cocaine fiend. ..