host: now live with harriet washington who over the next two hours we will take your calls and comments. the author of medical apartheid, "deadly monopolies" in the recently published "carte blanche" of nonconsensual medical testing on african-americans. the us military and prisoners. host: harriet washington you write to that at age ten albert schweitzer, out of your life come out of my life changed your life. how did that happen? >> i discovered that particular book and quickly began reading others. i was struck by his spirit of

how he melded his christian beliefs and philosophical beliefs but most of all life devoted to service. i found that incredibly compelling and the code of life to be very meaningful. and totally enchanting person. and then to be more nuanced and people pointed out things that's basically added up to the fact he was not perfect anymore than the rest of us are perfect. coming to that realization was quite a journey for me. at first i had an intolerance of any evidence of being less than perfectly actuated and then i began to realize he is a human being as we all are and it's important to not expect ask mann - - expection

but to appreciate people not only achieve great things like albert schweitzer did but other people to pursue a selfless agenda for their lives. he embodies the spirit of medical science perfectly. host: professionally, where did that book and your own persona lead you? >> even before that book, i was probably inspired by the film the nonstory starring audrey have bird. but different rules. she was in the ingénue that she was a nun who was deeply conflicted by her beliefs and passions and torn between being a good nine that was subservient and quiet and a

healer. that inspired me. i wanted to become a physician. is something i thought i would do. i did very well in high school. one the prizes and join the association. things came to a rather rude halt when i entered college, only 16 years old. i was told universally by my professors and advisers forget medicine. that is not a realistic goal for you. i was told by several people there are no african women american doctors. will not happen for you. of course that was a lie. so then there was that instant derailing. i was young and use to being courage in the academic so i exceeded and of course i would never do that today some it

was painful for me and even more so because it wasn't only my story happened to a lot of people. host: you write, harriet washington during your career as a medical researcher, someone said to you "girl, black people don't get organs they give organs. >> yes. [laughter] a large part she was right. host: what is the back story to that? >> in my case i was managing a prison control center upstate new york. i love the job. we were given old file cabinets by radiology. i was emptying it out and there were old patient files that had been forgotten in the cabinet. and i read everyone. i was being curious. i read every single file that was appalled to discover the files of the african-americans

who needed kidney transplants seem to be treated differently than the white patients. the social profile of the black patients had the word negro prominently written on every page of the social profile to make no mistake you are reading the file of a black person. they were center. two files were pretty identical. same age, elderly gentleman, kidney failure, both employed, those insured, both had families , all the things that people look for with social support and physical and financial ability but yet the thick one - - the white patient had statements from families and everything to buttress his claim to the oregon. the black person was center

with one single line actually. the treatment goal was to help them prepare for his imminent demise. it was signed by a physician that i knew. a kind, erudite man who seem to embody for me the same kind of qualities i admired and albert schweitzer. i was question so disappointed. of course that was not proof race was a factor of the allocation of organs but it was evidence. i talked with someone who worked on the unit as a clerk and told me. where have you been? of course black people are not getting the organs. they are going to white people this summer, i reviewed a book which an author had talked about one of the first organ transplants from a black man

into a white man. he detailed some of the history. some accurate, some not. basically he illustrated how this person in particular and other black people, their bodies were used to procure organs to go to whites. the same thing happened in this country and it was happening in south africa. as a high school student i heard about christian bernard and his heart transplants but nobody talked about the fact that again these organs were going into white people from black people in a country with where apartheid was the law. there was that disparity in some argue was still is. host: your 2000 book t13 you quote martin luther king "in justice and health is the most shocking and inhumane civil rights abuse. what was he referring to?

>> exactly that. doctor king had many concerns and we hear about his political concern. he was equally concerned about economic disparities and healthcare allocation which he was prescient enough to recognize as a systemic problem long before many other people dead. go back to accounts during that time, you will find northern papers are denouncing the south that were overtly racist but turning a blind eye to their own disparities. doctor king had a view that was much broader than that. he saw the political and economic and health struggles of people in this country were bound together and inextricably linked.

he saw how profoundly cool that wasn't how it will dictate a person's entire life. to be determined by the fact they were poor. host: medical apartheid is still a bestseller. you open the book with a story about doctor james marion sims. who was he? >> i talk about sims early in the introduction. he is important to me because he is so well at the demised a classic figure in american medicine. in american medicine, we designate certain people as medical heroes. the people who we say have achieved great things. when we use the term hero, we are not concerned how they achieved these things only we think they achieved them. sometimes we are wrong.

sometimes we describe the wrong one - - the achievements to the wrong person. but this is an example of a doctor viewed one way by whites in one way by blacks. many white people look at him as a father of american gynecology. praised like empress and slaves. and the american medical association and was viewed for a long time they were told to view him as a savior. he could have - - about going to glory details at the wearable complication that results in a woman being incontinent of urine and feces and living her life and perpetual pain and infection. and doctor sims learned how to close these surgically but predicated by taking only

black women and experimented on them for years trying different ways to close the fistulae which meant he was experimenting on them, doing surgery on them that was painful and intimate with members of black women in the victorian era. to have someone operating on your genitalia frequently and in front of witnesses. doctor sims would invite friends and other doctors to watch him work. he was abusing these black women, night wit women - - not white women. but it's also horrible the way medicine treated this behavior in general. today you will find people defending doctor sims by claiming he used in a seizure, but there wasn't any then. they are wrong. there was. the practices were different. today you have to test it and

written up in medical journals. but during the victorian era, mid- 19th century the practice was to experiment. try things out. asking the patient yes or no if they were white but not if they were black and then buying or selling or renting. and to do what they wanted to do to their bodies. two different views of doctor sims one from black women and then forced into painful intimate surgeries. and white women who could rejoice he found a cure for the horrible consequence of childbirth. it is something one finds repeatedly if you look at the

four centuries of history. repeatedly in american medicine the bodies of black people appropriated and used in service of other white people without having any opportunity to say yes or no. host: you write in medical apartheid, the precept held of scientific racism is sounding absurd but in the 18th and 19th centuries, scientific racism was simply science. it was promulgated by the best minds of the most prestigious institutions of the nation". what was the role of the prestigious institutions? >> these institutions and men, all men, though role was, not only to solve medical problems but tell the world and americans who african-americans were.

so one of the best-known scientist in the role that harvard was one of the group of scientist who examined african-americans and made certain proclamations about them. they said african-americans have profoundly different bodies and white americans. in fact black people belong to a different species. they were not truly homo sapiens. it was a missing link between animals and human beings. black people did not feel pain the way white people did because the nervous system was so primitive. simply unable to register pain or anxiety or develop heart disease. back then that was described as anxiety. african-americans were profoundly different beings. not just people with different skin hue or texture but beings who are not really human and had diseases that white people never had.

a deficiency disease was the disease black people had basically because they were dirty. even the imagine all this july the complication that doctor sims experimented on was affected more slave women than white women because slave women were sexually profligate and dirty. the reason given for the malaria, yellow fever, they proclaimed black people did not die from yellow fever the way white people did. they suffer less from malaria. the theories were profound the idea that by people did not suffer from heatstroke, they could work long hours without becoming tired. you put these police together and constitute a profound apology for slavery. if you are a planter confronted with vast fields in a subtropical environment

widely held to be malaria environment where people would get malaria. and a very hot environment where most white people and native americans would suffer heatstroke than what a better boon to be given a creature who did not feel pain, didn't get heatstroke, didn't die from yellow fever, you were assured did not feel pain or certain illnesses. it was a boon. it was a wonderful thing. what doctors were doing with the series was supporting enslavement. they continue to supported as enslavement changed with abolitionist exerting pressure to end the practice in other countries. ending enslavement so the medical theories became more and more, frankly hostile toward african-americans.

but the real purpose was to support enslavement to lend moral and medical support for the practice. a horrible situation. frankly you could still see aspects of it today. host: that's what i want to ask next. have you found proof of that mindset having effects today? >> others have found the proof. actually, sometimes it is really well-documented. pain. the believe pack - - black people did not feel pain was used to justify forcing them into enslavement and harsh work and forcing them into medical research. it is okay to cut the genitalia of african-american women with imagine all fistula because unlike the white women they will not feel the pain. so you would believe that belief would be long gone but studies have shown consistently that we still believe that.

medical practice still incorporates that belief. the most recent was 2016 university of virginia did a study. 60 percent of medical student survey believe african-americans do not feel pain the way white stead. they required more radiology, more radiation for treatment than whites. these beliefs are right out of the 19th century and affect how people practice. a good proportion of practicing doctors believe this. now we have doctors that believe they don't feel pain it's a very dangerous belief. and again it is straight out of a few centuries ago i worried about what we are not tracking are looking at. another thing is the belief in racially disparate diseases. it sounds laughable but we have it today. where back in the 19th century, just as

doctors believe black people did not die from yellow fever, malaria, today they also thought black people had diseases only they had like like blogger that it mentioned committees are things that only affected and killed black people according to them. but today we believe that. it's a very common believe even today that sickle cell disease only affects black people. it is not. the people who are at risk of sickle cell disease are people whose ancestors and currently grow up in the area where the mosquito was common. the mosquito carries malaria. being a heterozygote or the trait for sickle cell, not the disease but the trait is with malaria. if the area has a lot of

malaria and you have the trait for sickle cell disease and you are more likely to survive then with those who don't have it. it gives you a fitness advantage. but it is a matter of where you have grown up not your skin color. but we treat sickle cell as a black disease. so even when coronavirus 19 when research began in france , french doctors promptly published an article they proposed their believe that africans and african distant on - - dissent have infections very differently than those of white people. that biological wife is amiss driving thought even though there is often no evidence at all that it is understood as with malaria. we for centuries later have

not shaken that. host: your most recent book, "carte blanche" the erosion of medical consent. you open that with a modern-day story of a doctor named doctor robin armstrong. who is he? >> a doctor practicing in texas treating nursing home patients and employees. and the medication was first promulgated by donald trump , who by the way had a profound conflict of interest who own stock in a consortium that includes the same stock. so this is popularized by trump a lot of the political supporters embraced the end doctor armstrong was a supporter of trump actually propelled is nomination for president in texas.

he began giving it to his nursing home patients and the employees. but the nursing home patients, many of them were too infirm, old, or cognitively deteriorated to offer informed consent. you cannot give informed consent if you have cognition problems and not thinking very well. or if you are very ill. so these cases, it is typical to go to the next of kin. you talk to their children. you talk to a lawyer or whoever has been designated to make decisions. he did not do that. when asked by reporters he said i did not do that because if i talked with every treatment i wanted to give him it's been on my time talking to families. he is an repetitive of the fact he was not getting informed consent. he also claimed that people had been cured.

but when local health officials examine the records, they found something very different. there was not a good cure and a good number of people had gone on to become ill and died despite getting the medication. the larger question, the larger issue is so to not obtain consent in situations where it has been mandated by law and practice or in cases where doctors are institutions decide it's more important the expediency is more important than observing people's right to say yesterday now. so the larger question in 1986 without people being aware of it with lack of transparency

there were two large changes in the law that took away people's rights to consent to medical research. no transparency. people don't know this. we are seeing more and more experiments conducted on people who never had the chance to say yes or no. if they wanted to be involved in medical research. it's a fateful step as said in 1996 and i'm so puzzled so few people have so little information disseminated. i said people have to know this. that there is a pattern in this country that unless we stop it i'm afraid it will continue one day we will wake up and find out we don't have

the right to consent to many things we would expect to have the right. host: harriet washington, what is the legal medical definition of informed consent? >> they are nearly identical. informed consent is more than asking someone to do a procedure or conduct the experiment to say yes or no. you have to tell them everything they need to know to make a reasonable decision. what it is you propose to do, how to do it in detail, the known risks. there are risks you don't know of you cannot address those but the risks you do. the benefits you hope will accrue. and research you cannot be sure there are benefits. they could be harmful. but tell them why you think it might be beneficial. tell them anything how it might affect them. tired, hungry, unable to either drive. all of these things have to be revealed to the person. tell them about lifestyle changes.

what the purpose of research is. it's very important and has been violated in the past. it's hard to see that until you see the violation. you tell them all that but then you are not finished. once they are in the research come as things change and new information emerges, tell them that also. hypothetically if you find this drug causes the hair of redheads to turn brown, you have to tell everybody that as well. whatever arises has to be shared with people so they are always in a state of knowing. you also must tell people the matter what they have signed or paid, they always have the right to leave the research study. that's also very important. it has to be conveyed. it's a good thing in the code of federal regulations. in the section dealing with

human medical experimentation. spelled out clearly. but in 19962 exceptions were passed. that is where the problems began. now was certain types of research in the country no one has to tell you any of these things. they don't even have to tell you that you are in a research study. host: from "carte blanche" harriet washington right since 1996 being forced to participate in medical research has been permitted under the federal code of regulations provided certain conditions are met. what are those conditions? >> they are various. one says if you're testing a new treatment, you have to make a case it is better than the existing treatment.

the problem with that is the vague language. that permeates the laws. what is better? what that results in my opinion, when you want to test something new, there is a full on press to disparage the existing treatment. the treatment nobody questioned now you want to test and say the problem with giving celine to people who are losing blood is xyz. that is easily done

and will sabotage that condition. you don't always have the condition you don't have to tell people they are in the study. you don't have to get their permission that sometimes you do have to tell people who live in the area you are conducting the study you are doing this study so if for example they are shot in the chest they could end up in a situation they have artificial blood pumped into their body tell people that in general so they know they used to call that community consent. there is no consent involved. now they collect community notification so in north carolina, duke university, there were 5 million people in the region who could be affected. but community consent only reached a tiny percentage of people. a few hundred. that is what happens. the example of seattle at one point they told people the same thing were testing artificial blood. as an accident with a trauma victim we could put artificial blood into you without asking. they were day loosed with request for exemptions instead of what you had to wear 24 hours a day every day

and to say i declined the study. in this case i declined the polyhedron study they had so many request they ran out of bracelets for one year. during the one year nobody could get exempted from the study so wasn't observed even though it was claimed that it was. those are the important ones. but vague language. other standard of care that has to be flawed in some way. you will be hard-pressed to find any treatment that doesn't have some flaws but that is exploited to denigrate it and push for the experimental administration without permission that is what is imposed. host: we barely scratched the surface. guest is medical at the cyst

and scientist harriet washington the author of several books beginning 2000 living healthy with hepatitis c. medical apartheid. 2007. "deadly monopolies" which we have not talked about yet, the shocking corporate takeover of life itself and the consequences for your health and medical future, 2011. infectious madness, the surprising science of how we catch mental illness, 2015. a terrible thing to waste, environmental racism in the assault on the american mind, 2019. the most recent book "carte blanche" the erosion of medical consent. we will continue talking. we want to hear your voices as well. this is a participation program. call in with a question or comment

host: if you want to send a text only for text messages send it to the number (202)748-8903 please include your first name and city. you can also participate through social media just remember facebook instagram twitter and finally e-mail booktv at c-span.org. we will scroll through those during the program but there are several ways to contact harriet washington. what we have been talking about so far ms. washington is it leads to think about the

henrietta lacks, harriet washington? host: it makes me think about the henrietta lacks story. >> yes. first of all i am so happy she is now a household name very important story and i'm glad now that so many americans know what happened to her in 1984 i believe i spoke with her husband who was still alive and her family about her because i was deeply concerned this woman, 1951 had been suffering from ovarian cancer, had cells removed and cultured, kept alive - - kept

alive without her permission. her husband was very vehement in no uncertain terms he had refused permission for herself to be taken. the hospital did it anyway so nobody appropriation has something that has befallen people of color since they came to the american shores. it happens all the time. in her case, the cells were very unusual. they turned out to be biologically very valuable in terms of providing a good medium for culturing disease, testing medications, including the polio vaccine. yet her family was lied to. her husband had no idea the cells were taken over his objections. then her children. her son david i talked with him at length many times and in baltimore.

he told me that they found out by accident from a family member that worked at the hospital the mother cells were kept alive. one researcher johns hopkins had been frank with them and told them everything. even included their mother story in his textbook. but all the others denied it and they actually trick the family by telling them at one point we are concerned you may have the same cancer your mother had so we need to get blood samples. that's not why. they wanted the samples because poor laboratory techniques was colonizing the samples to be misidentified. they needed to identify which with the helix samples in which were not. it had become an international problem for cells to be distributed so widely and so

valuable. but they had a lot of samples and cultures misidentified. they that they were looking at prostate cells they hear they were healer cells. when i read the original medical journals, the way her cells were racialized most cell cultures came from white people because researchers would take their own cells from the bodies and use them. it's just poor laboratory technique caused contamination. instead of blaming researchers it went into the cells use our language of the cells being rapacious and aggressive in taking over other cultures like they are jumping around the laboratory. it was ridiculous. that the cells were racialized and especially aggressive and not respecting boundaries.

so with these healer cells a horrible example of how the family was lied to a received without permission they were lucrative cells. a great deal of money was involved. but yet researchers were consistently saying there is no monetary value to these cells. that is not true. they didn't want to admit to compensate the family. fast-forward. the positive aspect is a belatedly johns hopkins took responsibility and the nih actually worked with the family in order to moderate distribution of the cells and include the family and their own fiduciary rights. that's a good thing.

it only applies to her cells unfortunately. i would like to see it applied more widely. but the other aspect is there was a white man who cells were treated in a similar manner. his name is john moore. but people have no way of understanding or knowing is even those dramatic examples of the appropriation of cells and lying and income withholding and credit from the family, today we are facing a very different type of bodily appropriation. it's no longer unusual cells like henrietta lacks. no other cells had the quality of hers but now companies find large amount of normal cells are profitable now their contracts of hospitals to take the surgically excised cells from patients after surgery to acquire them from the hospital for many and then use them for

medically valuable procedures. that means all of us are henrietta lacks. we all have cells that could be taken either without our knowledge or understanding what it meant when we signed the consent form. and it's not only profit i know a lot of the writing focused on the monetary. which is significant. it was. bonnet talk to the family that's not the prime consideration. is more concerned with the fact the mother was a global benefactor giving something very important to medicine but yet it had not been acknowledged. that is what consumed them. that is what they would ask me about. they didn't talk about the many. a lot of journalist perhaps

well-meaning first speak of the monetary value and focus on that. that was not the families concern. their concern was as the sons had come i don't think they wanted to know it was a black lady hoping the world. his exact words. he told me a poignant story how when i told him some of the things that had transpired in 1984, he wanted to see for himself. he went to john's hopkins medical library, they would not let him in. he was not able to read information about his own mother. csc is very significant but time has moved on and because of the patent system we are now henrietta lacks now it is their own issues that are on the option block. that is more than a financial

value. and maybe more importantly, the lack of control the way our tissues are used. the lack of agency. nobody is asking us. it is true there are consent forms sometimes. if you are patient in the hospital you know what it's like to give a sheet of consent forms before surgery. most people sign it because they need the surgery. they may not notice they have to deal with the tissue taken out of surgery. in fact the language on the form tends to have things like we want to take your word discarded, worthless tissue. if they were worthless they would not want them. because it is discarded does not mean you lose all interest in what happens to it. you can choose to discard tissue but yet you may be invested in what is done with them.

one example, if you have a therapeutic abortion , something mandated by your health status but if you are antiabortion and don't think they should take place and they take the abortus and they do something with it that has to do with preserving to support abortions, then you might not have wanted your tissues use that way. you can have an interest in discarded tissue. that is something researchers would do well to incorporate in their decisions about how you deal with discarded tissues. host: harriet washington you said you talk to the henrietta lacks family until 1994 but not until 2010 henrietta lacks became a common name in the american culture because of

rebecca's book. >> that is right. host: did you think about writing this story earlier? >> i did want to. in fact i wanted to write about the story. i had interesting exchanges. i would a brief article about it for a now defunct news magazine. emerge magazine. i was approached by the baltimore sun so they asked me to do a sunday magazine piece on it. but the peace and i was focused on what i thought were most important to me and to readers. i focused on the effects of appropriating the tissues. i focused on the failure to acknowledge the important role of the african-american woman in american medicine. i wrote about the ethics of

distribution, things like that. the response from the baltimore sun was this is too heavy. case humanize her a bit more? what do you mean? it seems so sad thinking it is sad. they said write about her dancing or wearing makeup or something to humanize her. is that i don't want to do that because it is an

important ethical issue i don't want to dilute that. then they asked me very pointed questions over the cultural divide the african-americans refer to as monument mall it has gone to several name changes. the original was monday when i referred to it as the african-american name they were adamant that i changed it. they did not even know that was the official name of them all. most people know about it as monument mall. that most african-americans think of it by that name then i realize there was a cultural friction

and disconnect. i would not write about her dancing or wearing makeup because that would dilute the import of what happened. i was not happy of both names but i would not use the long name of them all. it seemed like a cultural problem i said don't run the peace. they ran a piece afterwords talking about henrietta lacks her nails painted red and focus on her dancing. the focus of the editors i spoke with to undercut the severity of what happened. also intent on having family members say things they were not saying. i realized it would not happen in that climate with those editors. the interesting thing is that although the important thing of rebecca's book now everyone knows who she is i'm grateful for that. i would have written a very

different book as a medical ethicist the claims made in the book about the lack of ethical claims there were no medical ethics back then, scientists and doctors could do is they wanted. that is not true. i wrote a review this summer that made the same error and i pointed out in detail there was a number for cases that establish the right to informed consent. not only westlaw but in hospital practice. when people keep claiming these laws did not exist it is acknowledging the abuse of african-americans.

it was observed with whites but not black people. so to say they did not exist as a way to exonerate researchers who chose not to observe them when it came to african-americans. i would have written a very different book. host: currently lecturing columbia university former page-one editor, research fellow and medical ethics at harvard. first call comes from bayside new york mary on you are on - - mary and your on with author harriet washington. >>caller: i just got my c-span reinstated. i didn't know anything about your book. i cannot wait to get my hands on it. because of my own experience trying to take care of my elderly parents and to see how terrible and unbelievably bad elderly people are treated does your book

contain advice? not to go on and on but recently coming back from colorado i was talking that advance directives did not mean anything if you are not informed how bad the patient is i said should i carry them with me? what happens if you are in a car accident and unconscious and they don't know you have them. how do you get that protection? she told me people in colorado are getting tattoos that they have them prove that there is some type of protection.

>> thank you. that is an excellent question. i talk about advanced directives and their limitations. you are right. the elderly are particularly valuable. i detail that in the book. it's very hard in my opinion what can one person do? you are confronted not only with laws but a lack of transparency. during the pandemic that has been heightened of necessity. you are even less likely to see her loved one in a hospital or talk face to face and get information is more difficult. bottom line this has to be solved in the law.

said you think black gay men are mistrustful of the medical system?

the problem is that black people want to avoid certain types of care. no. the problem is we have a system that creates disparities and abuses

african-americans and punishes them for seeking medical care. i talk about the belief african-americans don't feel pain the way whites do. so when they come to hospitals they are turned away as drug-seeking. sometimes you don't get that healthcare as often. or african-american gay men are they avoiding prep are they not trusting it? or is it less likely held out as an option? it's important to find out what is going on. and doing studies to find out, then we cannot know what is happening. there is a parallel case.

because you seem to be following this really well, let's assume

it's what you feared and african-americans are avoiding it, so then the question becomes after you rule out access problems because are they offered at the same rate as whites minutes of matter to make sure they understand the advantage to them and have-- find out if there are any fears i'm a find out what they are. you cannot alleviate them without knowing the fears and then address them, so it's a matter of doing a little research. we have to find out what's really going on. maybe it's not offered to them as often and we have to find out if they are avoiding it, why are they avoiding it and then we can zero in on it and raise the numbers where they should be. that's an excellent question, gary. host: if you are intrigued by our conversation with harriet washington, go to c-span shop.org and there you can purchase one of her books and part of the purchase price supports the c-span mission.

c-span shop.org. on in san diego, please go ahead with your question or comments for herriot watchmen. caller: hello. i'm calling about the recent bias in the medical profession. i recently found out that when i go get a blood test, they got a blood test for blacks and they also have a blood test for others. why is that and concerning herriot a dish herriot-- henrietta lacks, how come they don't let us know how many diseases that this lady cured or anything because to me she did more for medicine than anyone else that lived. host: harriet washington?

guest: ronda, you may be right about the latter point and that's where her family was concerned about when i talk to them in 1994 and as i began telling things i knew about and there was much more, of course, that's what they said. said she was a benefactor to the entire world. why don't they admit this and talk about this that's a good question, it's a question i have asked repeatedly about many people including medical researchers who tended not to get their due of their african americans, their work tends to be ignored, but in terms of the blood test i'm really concerned, what blood test is this? i have to say it's been news to me. and you know there are tests administered on a racial basis still. can you tell me a bit more about it? host: at ron is gone. i apologize. guest: i wish i knew what tests

he was talking about. maybe he will call back or text and let us know because it something i don't know anything about. is a lot of people know, early in the design of blood to storage, blood in this country and a few other countries was indeed categorized by race with a blood from african-americans kept separate from white americans and charles drew was working on blood storage in the uk, but didn't want to work in the us for that reason and it was based only on racial superstition, absolutely no medical basis at all, but it's a shocking to think it could still be happening today. host: ron, if you went to text in, make sure you include your first name enter city. for those of you who cannot get through on that phone line, you could try social media at book tv, face the,

instagram, twitter, e-mail book tv at c-span.org and finally the phone number remaining hour with author harriet washington 200-. barbara in new york city, good afternoon. >> good afternoon, peter good afternoon, ms. washington. in a little local newspaper here a woman wrote an article about vacillating on vaccine and she was asking why new yorkers were refusing to get the vaccine shot and at the end of her article she wrote a statement implying that it's the duty of people to get the shot and in your book you talk about how individuals are told

that they have a moral responsibility to participate in research. would you speak about whether we have a duty or moral responsibility to take the covid vaccine and secondly in your book you talk about murder in order to sell the body to anonymous and there was documented instance of that. can you explain when and where that happens? thank you so much. host: barber, why did you pick out "carte blanche"? caller: i saw she was going to be on the show and i rushed out and got it and i have her other book, "medical apartheid" and i just think she's wonderful. host: are you a medical professional in any way? caller: now, i am not. guest: barber, before you go, repeat your question about refusing the coronavirus vaccine caller: i said the lady wrote an article in the news people--

newspaper and she's asking a question why are new yorkers still refusing to get the covid vaccine. at the end of it, she implies you have a duty to get the covid vaccine guest: thank you. thank you. well, i will take your last question first and that is the only documented workings and that is murder to sell the body to people doing anatomy in a hospital, the only documented time in the country took place in baltimore, but it has been well documented. of course, i don't remember offhand the particulars except that it was a white woman living in a black neighborhood who was involved with a black man and what is significant is that this was well documented, but black people in the area claimed that-- is still claim that many black bodies had also been

used, so one of the white women is documented in the ones of the black bodies are still, you know, was never documented. very very concerning, but it happened a long time ago and hopefully nothing like that is still done today. in terms of any moral responsibility for accepting the coronavirus vaccine, that's actually tricky there are people who argue there is more responsibility in their point is that the more people who are vaccinated, the better protected are people who cannot accept vaccinations so by accepting vaccinations against coronavirus you are not only protecting yourself, you are protecting other people including people who cannot receive the vaccine for some reason. maybe they are too young

or allergies to the ingredients. there are people who cannot do it. also, vaccines are not infallible. even though they are well designed and work really well on most people, they may not work for certain people, certain individuals, so the more people who are vaccinated, the better the chance we have as a community, as a country of avoiding illness altogether, so the argument is that if you can be vaccinated you really should be vaccinated to protect other people and that argument has moral authority to it. it's hard to argue with that, but going from that to saying that it's an imperative, that we should force people to get vaccines to become vaccinated, that's quite a step. sometimes it should be undertaken. i'm not really equipped to say whether it something we should mandate by law. i think mandating it by

law is something we should consider, but i'm not sure we should do it so, that's kind of a tricky thing. of the problem, of course, is that americans, we love our freedom; right? how many things have we seen below in the name of freedom of speech people in other countries wouldn't necessarily cs freedom of speech, so we love our freedom and we don't take kindly to being told we have to do something and yet that's a tool in public health that i sometimes think we don't use often enough. so, not prepared to say that vaccines should be mandated by law. i'm prepared to say bring a mask should be mandated by law for the simple reason that it's protective. we know it to be protective. right now, we so often rely upon organizations or institutions to enforce it. i mean, how often-- how

many videos can you see other people in a whole foods refusing to wear a mask and exposing other people before you realize that the whole foods people aren't necessarily equipped to enforce this? if it has to be a force, it should be enforced by the government, so this is something that is a tool that we need to consider using more often. in the case of vaccination though, i'm not quite sure especially because a lot of the claims about people refusing vaccines i find to be here he as in particular who are accused of refusing vaccines just liked african americans accused of not signing clinical-- clinical trials, but did. african-americans not getting vaccines now actually it's a due to a lack of access. we have had policies that separate african americans in vaccination

we have practices that separate them from vaccination and so mandating that by law would be problematic because you will end up punishing people for things that aren't their fault. you know, if we have a policy that dictates that people who are 85 and older get priority, then you have to face the fact that in this country african-americans, hispanic americans, native americans are all young populations, much less likely to reach the age of 85. 90 -year-olds in the country, twice the rate 90 -year-olds are white and black in this country, so when you have a policy that prioritizes and privileges people 85 and older you are actually operating against people of color. we should certainly be prioritizing people older. we should be doing it, but we also have to prioritize people of color who are also at heart-- higher rate-- higher risk of infection

, so we need better policies, not punishing people for things that are not there doing. host: harriet washington, have you gotten your vaccine and what kind of research did you do if you did get it? guest: i got my vaccine, but i'm the first to admit although i'm happy there's a vaccine. a very happy the vaccine worked out well. they are very effective. and they seem to be extremely safe, but how much research can one really do? of necessity, vaccines were indeed generated more quickly and without the same meticulous data that we require further vaccines. that's just a fact of life. we didn't have the luxury of a five or six years, you know, so i think we did the right thing not to do that, but also means that we relied upon companies own certification that

their vaccine had a 96% you know effectiveness or efficacy, not quite the same thing. but, the thing was in my opinion, it was the only logical step. i was very happy we had a vaccine. i embraced the vaccine because look at the alternative. the longer people take to embrace the vaccine, i keep-- i try to make it clear to people that it's not 100% guaranteed that there will be no problems. that's an unrealistic goal, but it's 100% guarantee that if you don't take the vaccine you are much higher rate of becoming infected and affected some one else and falling victim to a variance that could be much worse than what we see now. i worry about the people who say they will wait

and see. in fact, i talked to doctor who's written well about this in one of the problems of saying i will wait and see what happens is the longer you wait, the more chance you will be exposed to some of variance that will be worse than what people are experiencing now and in that more ill and spread that, so it's a dangerous thing to wait and see. it's barry clear that the best possible course is to take the vaccine. host: and mgh is massachusetts a general? guest: yes, thank you. that's in boston. so, taking the vaccine, in my opinion, is the only logical route, it's the thing to do. i'm glad we have that option and if it hasn't been made abundantly clear by now it's important to realize african-americans like other americans understand that and that's why we were in the clinical trials

despite all the headlines to the contrary and that's why i'm convinced that it is a lack of access to, hampering african-americans from getting the vaccine in greater numbers. there is a lot of noise, a lot of headlines and anecdotal focus on african-americans who don't want to take the vaccine, but i'm convinced those numbers are dwarfed by the many people who want the vaccine and are having a hard time getting it. host: sec from portland text into you, regarding the question that ron just asked, i heard there were different test standards for things like diabetes or black people than there are for other races in determining whether someone has diabetes. guest: i don't know about diabetes. i do know that there are algorithms, you know, basically formulas used to determine whether someone is in a disease estate, so yes, you're

correct about that. they are also used to determine what treatment should be given people and unfortunately you are correct in that race is factored in. it should not be factored in. i think that is changing its changing to slowly but we are beginning to see changes. for example, if you read medical journal articles, you will see when describing patient, races almost immediately with the first things they say about patient. my question is why? shouldn't you be describing the patient, what their symptoms are, what they are experiencing, their history? why do we need to know it's an african american rather than a white person? that's a deep flawed our thinking and these algorithms that contain the law deciding that a diagnosis would be different if a person is black or white. i spoke with patricia williams-- actually i was on a panel with her

and she described eloquently exactly what you are saying. she had an osteoporosis attest and the doctor was trying to run the results and it wasn't working, they couldn't get any response from the testing mechanism. they kept saying you know, no response possible. until her doctored decided he would take the fact that she was african-american out of the equation and immediately they had a value for her. so, yes, it's something that's done in america. it again-- begins with incorporating the fact the person is african american from the beginning and the assessment and that is wrong. it should not be there. all it does skew results and that's very problematic. i wish i could say that i see evidence its changing quickly. i see evidence its changing glacially slow leaks. host: rose from connecticut since this text: i'm a dmp

behavioral health psychiatric nurse and one thing i've noticed during the years of working on psychiatric units is that patients of color especially black patients were given higher doses of psychoactive meds compared to the white patients who exhibited similar symptoms from the same diagnosis. that always bothered me. guest: yes, yes, rose, you are absolutely correct. it's been a very long time, but a long time ago i worked on a psychiatric unit in the emergency to permit, actually. i saw the same thing. african-american patients are more likely to be diagnosed with a psychosis, serious mental illness, the same symptoms would give a white person in your process, a less serious illness. the symptoms tend to be interpreted more dramatically with much more severe illness than the same behaviors, same

symptoms of white people. they tended to be given more higher dose of medication and then whites. when i asked a psychiatric nurse white was blacks were receiving higher doses, she looked at me and she was perfectly serious and said, you have to understand, african-americans have more muscle mass and it's harder for them to metabolize it. i knew that was sheer bs i was really shocked to hear her say that, but that actually is the same kind of thinking that i talked about, we saw on the 19th century with the doctors deciding that african-americans had different diseases, that they had diseases they were immune to and that they were retained. also, they believed the medications given to white people and black people should differ, that the patient can work on back people at all and others they

needed a higher dose, needed more radiation for their cancers. its complete fiction and has no basis in fact and yet it's being done is something that needs to be challenged. who knows, maybe you and someone working in the field can get some kindred spirits to interrogate your own institution about whether they want to continue doing this. host: have you considered going back to medical school or starting medical school? guest: me? host: yes. guest: i'm a bit old now. i probably would if i were younger. host: and norma is in eugene, oregon. caller: good morning. host: hello. guest: good morning. caller: ms. harriet, i have a question for you. i'm a 74-year old mostly apache and other heritages. i was diagnosed with polio at the age of 22

-month-old, mind you polio doesn't affect the face, but that was most of my body that was paralyzed and i feel like i was experimented on quite a bit. host: norma, why do you say that caller: well, okay, since september, 2019, i have had several face procedures. prior to that, when i was younger i was in the hospital from 22 months of age pretty much continuously until i was nine years old. guest: my goodness. caller: most of this care would paid for by the march of dimes, so there was money there to cover whatever there was they wanted to do with me. i was in isolation. of the theory was polio was contagious. host: norma, is this just

looking back you think maybe experiments were done on you or is this something you have proof of? caller: that is most of my question. how do i researched this because i was in isolation, so i don't know what other patients were going through. host: thank you, ma'am. we have that good question there. how can she find out about her medical history, harriet washington? guest: it's difficult to prove that one has been used in research without one's knowledge. it's very difficult to prove, but you can-- looking at old records is a really good start. about problem is that old records sometimes are unavailable. they may never have been digitized. all too often what i found was over and over again in researching events is that records are quote lost. when i hear that records are lost i almost

immediately have a reaction-- negative reaction thinking maybe they were lost or maybe they were lost on purpose, but the reality is you have to go into it with your eyes open and relation may not have access to these things. however, one good approach maybe finding a sympathetic ear in a journalist. perhaps a journalist in a local publication of yours because they are very practiced and skill they getting information or to the of information act is something anything can-- anyone can file, but as most journalists know how there can be small changes in the way you finally that increases your chance of success. rather than going into this on your own, you may want to try to find an ally if you can get a journalist interested, that could help you. if you can't, then it's a matter of educating yourself. you know the institution where you were treated or surgery etc. it was

done then you do a freedom of information act and asked for information about your case depending on where you live relations might prevent you from getting information about other cases, but you should be able to find out about your own and it's also a matter of finding out when you can, what kind of procedures were done, experiments conducted and that can also be very difficult. if you live in california, it's a bit easier because california has these quote sunshine laws that make it easier to find out about governmental activities. other states it's basically a fishing expedition that can take a long time. you mention procedures done recently i think in 2019, though, those i think your chances might be a bit better in finding out precisely what happened. again, that might start with contacting the

institution and asking them and some people find it easier to contact the institution and try to get information in a non- complicated way, just hey, i'm interested in knowing more of what procedures you did on me, what can you tell me and then you can consider doing the same thing i am in of information act compelling the institution to give you more it's-- information. i wish you all the luck in the world. it can be done, but again, urge you to get assistance of a journalist or someone who can maybe do these things in little more skilled manner than most of the rest of us can. host: looks like we have ron from san diego back on the line. what kind of medical tests were you talking about? caller: i was talking about blood tests. you go in and get up blood tested may have an algorithm where when you take the test may either use that i'll go to determine-- if you are

up like they have algorithm for blacks and then algorithms for others and that to me is racial bias, but that's not the only way-- guest: it is. caller: the way i also looked at the new england journal of medicine and also the va. .-dot va-- the question has been brought to them from me and i guess others about this situation so va investigating it, racial bias in medicine and new england journal of medicine and a lot of scholar papers you can go to the net and see. host: we are going to leave it there and just hear from harriet washington on that. guest: yes, the algorithms are in play here, but i wanted to know what kind of tests. there are many many types of blood tests. is there one in particular that you are

pursuing? host: i apologize, harriet washington, i let him go to get in some more calls so i apologize to both of you for that. susan in cambridge, massachusetts. caller: thank you for taking my call. at the beginning you mentioned doctors who don't belong but are still revered and one that i would really hope you would look into is harold wolf who's listed of the father of headache medicine and pioneer in psychosomatic illness. well, he worked for the cia and there's a number of books, three books that i know of that explain his involvement in developing torture techniques through the cia which he then used on his mind grant-- migrant patients without consent and my brother was a patient of his.

he was told he had a psychosomatic illness, that he had a brain tumor that group for six years until it ruined his life. so, his research on psychosomatic illness and what he did was he took the torture techniques through deprivation etc. and used them on his migrant patients who the cia records they came out terrified and said the headaches were gone, but they didn't know if that was because-- host: susan, can you put a period on this? caller: lancet published profile of him in 2016, it was. host: it we are to leave it there. there's a lot of information. harriet washington, anything you want to respond to susan about?

guest: i'm very very sorry susan about your brother. it sounds that this doctor wilson you said has already been the subject of three books you said and other publications and i'm glad it's been exposed, but i'm very sorry about what happened with your brother. host: baltimore, gladys, you are on the tv on c-span2 with author harriet washington the. caller: good afternoon to your guest there and you too. this is my first time to ever call, i believe. i'm curious about the president of nigeria. i don't know him, but i'm curious-- he's been to the doctor's over in england a couple or more times and i'm wondering why he hasn't selected united states for his medical problems. i want to know what his problems are also, so

harriet, could you tell me why he's going over to england all the time? host: gladys, was the crux of your question, what's your-- what's behind your question, isn't a distrust of us medicine? caller: yeah, i would say that. that would be the answer, yes. host: thank you ma'am. guest: i'm afraid i cannot help you, gladys. i have no idea what a suffering from or why he prefers doctors in the uk to the us. i just can't help you there. sorry. host: we have not talked at about a terrible thing to waste, environmental racism and its assault on the american mind. what's the definition of environmental racism? guest: if you ask 10 people you get 10 different answers, but the exposure to toxic substances whether they are in chemicals or heavy metals are pathogen's,

this exposure is racially mediated in this country. people are-- people of color are exposed to it that much much higher rates than people who are right, even profoundly poor white peopleonmental hazards than our middle-class black people. its racially mediated although not recognized as such and therefore a lot of harms resulting in this are also racially mediated. environmental racism we find lead poisoning is a success story among white children in the country, but among black and hispanic children it's still a scourge that robs them of their health and also their cognition over time, so we have got these racially disparate sources of profound illness and cognitive problems, brain damage in this country due to

our failure to regulate hazardous materials effectively. host: now, would lead paint the part of this problem? guest: yeah, lead is a heavy metal that we know causes a variety of physical illness. it's hard to locate anything in the body that's not harmed by lead, but also the brain. it damages the brain and so lead in terms of paint, lead in gas, even lead lined water pipes as we-- that causes the destruction in places like flint, pittsburgh, us, in fact most american cities. led is probably the iconic source of environmental toxicity. host: harriet washington, your boat "deadly monopolies" and we

reference this a bit when we were talking about henrietta lacks, but in this book you write 1980, colleges and universities secured 260 patents per year. in 2000, that number was 3000 per year. they make hundreds of millions of dollars, the colleges and universities do. what happened? guest: .com. on the college and university make hundreds of millions of dollars, but pharmaceutical industry makes six billion dollars a year and basically in 1980, businesses convinced congress people especially dole that they needed to be able to exploit the patent developments in universities. the federal government was supporting university research. the research was coming up with patents,

molecules, discoveries that were potentially important, but universities were not in the business of producing products, so industry said, lead us by these patents or rented these patents and we will create products, more medicines needed. we will generate a lot of industry and patents lying around not helping anyone, we can make them into medications of the government said good idea, passed a law allowing them to do that and as a result of the law passed in 1980 and similar laws passed we now have corporations who basically are controlling medical research. they determine what drugs are developed, how much of the drugs much it will cost. they determine which drug will be discouraged and ignored in the things that universities once did, corporations now do, but corporations are focused on the bottom line. they will make a decision that will garner them the most

money. they aren't making decisions that will garner the best drugs and that's why today we have, for example, 20 drugs for erectile dysfunction and almost no new drugs for malaria the latter is a killer, but erectile dysfunction is a drug people are willing to pay a lot of money for, so basically in 1980, we turn to the control of medical research from your universities over to corporations it was not a good deal. host: why do drugs seem to cost more in the us than in other countries? is it because they are not subsidized by government? guest: drug costs more in us than many other countries because-- drug companies will charge what people are willing and able to pay to stay alive. it's no accident best expensive drugs are for the most dangerous diseases. if you have a drug that might save you from dying of cancer, the

companies know you are willing to pay almost a million dollars a year for that drug or your insurer is a mess with a charge. however, in the developing world, you don't have people who can pay that money. either the drug company won't sell their drug there or the people in the developing world can't afford it so in this country people go bankrupt paying for medication and in developing world people just die. host: what about generics? guest: well, a lot of generics are made by the same companies that make the e-mail patented for-profit brands and the thing is so generic drugs are approximately 20% lower at least in 2001 when i looked it up, 20% lower than the first brand drug. the problem with generic drugs is that they aren't the answer because same companies are making them and what will happen is that in this country, and they

are not that much cheaper and the companies will come up with another drug that's on patent that might do the same thing, but is advertised as better than all the drug. the old drugs might work perfectly well or might work even better for some people than the new ones, but the new ones are the ones that are pushed. the new ones that are the ones doctors are under pressure to promulgate and prescribed for their patience and some the thing about generic drugs is that in some countries for a very long time you had drugs that had-- you a countries that had different patent systems , so for example in this country was patented is the actual condition of the drug. in another country, what is in india what you patent might be the manufacturing profits. that meant in indian

companies you basically reverse engineer and sell the same drugs sold in our country cheaper in places like nigeria, thailand where people cannot afford our drugs. unfortunately, the wto passed a some laws forcing poor countries to respect western patent so they could not do that any longer, so now they have to also by the really expensive drugs and even though the patent system has written into it basically an escape clause, is perfectly legal for the us or any other country to say we are going to take the patent away from the company selling the drug for a lot of money. we are going to give it to the committee that promises to make the drug for something less that people can actually afford, but when companies have done that , the us has been quick to accuse them of intellectual property theft and chest eight them doing something criminal. it's really frowned upon our government and our companies don't want to do this and want to do

this and castigate people who do do this so it's basically the escape clause is not made available to us, so drug prices are maintained at an artificially high level and the prices-- let's be really clear-- have nothing to do with the cost of the drug. of the companies claim their rationale that drugs are extensive to produce and market and they are, but they aren't nearly as expensive enough to merit the prices that are asked for them. so, the reality is that the cost is one thing, but the prices are something that are based on what people are willing to pay and able to pay. again, to stay alive. host: harriet washington, a lecturer at columbia university. she was born on fort dix , daughter of two soldiers. she's the author of six books and one of the

things we like to do with our in depth authors is ask him or her what they are reading and if this is something that interests you we will show you right now the books that harriet washington, some of her favorite books and some of the books that she's reading. here are some of her favorites. rudolph fisher, up above the world, on custom earth, the warden anthony trollope, the beggars opera i john gay, the word for world is forced by ursula le guin im core more and other stories by samuel delany and she's currently reading button brooks by thomas mann. went through a lot of books there, harriet washington, but you added this note to our producer and said i just finished reading 30 plus the books in my role as a critic.

guest: that's a lot of books. i'm lucky enough to be in this group that are passionate about books and we reinforce each other's a sickness. [laughter] host: when we were reading the list of books and you heard what some of your favorites are and what you're reading now, which was struck you that you wanted to talk about? guest: aerosmith. i can completely explain the fascination for me, but it's a fascinating book. i read it at least once a year, most years i probably would admit to reading it more often and it's weird because the book was published in 1920s. sinclair lewis was given a nobel prize based on this book, but it's actually embraced more by scientists and

literature people, which i find interesting and on the face of it, it's kind of straightforward. it talks about a young man who becomes a medical researcher, but before he engages in pure research, he starts -- he has a lot of like faith towards public health, private practice, a lot of aspects of medicine all of which kind reveal something about his personality, but also described by sinclair lewis and like this really wonderfully amusing, but deep sardonic-- sardonic perception of them that on one hand it seems to be mocking, but it also is very true. it's hard to describe except sinclair lewis and genius for inventing part of the american continent that didn't actually exist, but you read it it's

recognizable in real and he did that for american medicine in the 1920s in a way that resonates today. aerosmith-- aerosmith talks about things like when there is a pandemic , academic break-- a breakout in a tropical island and their protagonist has to decide whether he's going to give half the people on the island when he hopes is a keyword, a vaccine and lets the other half go unvaccinated to observe the control. he does this and justifies it, but the dilemma we face today, today we are daily faced with the dilemma of are we going to use a some people in the world is basically test subjects to improve the health of other people. it's a dilemma. lewis captured perfectly in the 1920s in a way

you can mechanize to. anyway, it's a wonderful book and i cannot recommend it more. you will record allies a lot of things and you'll probably have fresh revelations. it's probably the best of american literature landscape ever. host: what i noted in your writing is that george bernard shaw seems to make an appearance a lot. guest: yes. a doctor friend of mine said well, shaw was a great doctor haider, but i don't think he was. i think he was just a idealist with a sardonic sense and there are some things he summed up well. one thing he said that i applied to african-americans when i wrote "medical apartheid" was that he talked about the fact that for a lot of people in medicine the tragedy because you have to trust medical people, trust doctors and researchers and-- with your life and yet you

don't trust them. so, it's a horrible dilemma and it's a real dilemma, a real american dilemma. @a lot of people in this country pace this everyday, so i think shaw was right on the money. i don't think he hated doctors. i think he had a clear ideal that doctors were highly skilled and idealistic, but you know again human beings, flawed like the rest of us. host: we have about 15 minutes left with author harriet washington and steve in cincinnati, good afternoon. you are on book tv. caller: thank you very much for letting me speak. congratulations to you, ms. washington for fabulous books. just amazing. there is a doctor that in 1985, harold friedman , from harlem hospital, a surgeon and came up with a procedure

called navigation where he helped people get from the community to a cancer care and turned upside down the whole issue of mortality. he became the first african american president in the american cancer society and was a member of the medical school faculty as well, but his procedures never really spread across the country and here in cincinnati we are still reluctant to use his procedures even though they are so effective and i wonder if ms. washington knows why people are reluctant to use the navigation approach. host: why are you familiar with harold freeman? caller: i just came across his work. incredibly entrenched with his research showing in five years he transformed 70% mortality rate into 70% success rate. host: are you in the medical field? caller: yes.

host: in what capacity? caller: trying to help people get exams for cancer and other treatments and also to get vaccinated as well. host: thank you. carried washington? guest: steve, thank you for bringing him up. i know doctor friedman and i'm aware of his work and you are correct, really important. groundbreaking work. freeman has again he saw things during the 80s and 90s that a lot of people only realizing just now. he's also the one who famously said that you look at the life expectancy of a black man in harlem, it's the same babe bangladesh in, so you cannot compare the health of black-- of people in new york as if all people in new york are treated well because the reality is different and navigating the system was something he

saw very important. what was interesting about that, the reversal of navigating a system was he was taking the point of view of the patient. up until then, the focus had always been from the system center. is the patient showing up their appointment? and they complicit with taking their medication? but, he took the point of view of the patient. how can the patient get their medication? whence he gets to the hospital, how does the patient find out or navigate, how does he find out how to get to the right clinic or the right caregiver? she recognized that hospitals were largely opaque to outsiders in patients and that a lot of the focus on patients not following through our patients not doing what they are expected

to do has more to do with system failures than it has to do with patient failures and that's a very hard view to take historically from the point of view of american medicine when there are certain perspectives often from the point of view of the surgeon or doctor of high social status. what was being done from their point of view, was the patient doing xyz and to invert that and look at the system and see how the system might be failing and needed to be either navigated or improves-- improved, it's a huge and change and it's been hard for people to make it. i have noticed anecdotally, i don't know the data, but i've noticed anecdotally that it seems to be more than norm and parts of the uk especially if you go to places like london. more of an appreciation

that takes place. but, you know, just like his a success in getting people into the system successfully and getting them seen and treated appropriately has been mirrored by other people as well. i'm thinking of client calendar when everyone seemed was wringing his hands saying african-americans won't sign up for organ transplant or won't follow through or they won't be complicit with it, but calendar quietly got many people in the area and beyond, he got african-american very invested in the transplant system. signing up to be donors, getting their friends to sign up and even otis bradley, another american cancer society president who's african-american, he also had the same inverted perspective from the point of view

of the patient, of the subject. how are we failing them? how can we better serve them? that seems to be a big difference between them, taking that approach rather than how do we make them fit and help your system which is admittedly flawed, so that inversion is a hard thing for people to make culturally and also just so you know-- how can put this, the habit of practice. habitually, it's been set up for the convenience of the researcher, convenience of the surgeon, convenience of a high status practitioner and getting people to completely invert that is a big ask your buck, it can be done. it's very successful and i hope that the success these people have had is going to militate for others paying attention and doing things differently. we can only hope that her great thing to bring up, steve.

host: harriet washington, are we looking at her office at home and is this where you do your writing? guest: this is what passes for an office. [laughter] it's where i do all my writing. you can't see, but i have a huge bookcase to the left and the smaller one over here and all of my equipment and stuff so it's my little space capsule here. host: okay. "carte blanche" just came out this year. wendy ju starred start and it and how much of it was research and how much was writing? guest: i don't know about the research and writing. it's a hard thing to tease out for me. research is continual. so, i really don't know. i worked on it for about two years i only planned it to work on it for one year, but the pandemic in every and made changes in publishing, so the book was published about a year later than it should have been, which is

five. i'm really happy with it , happy out with columbia global report and it was actually a bit of a relief to write a smaller book. i'm used to riding huge door stoppers and this one was more focused on smaller and i really enjoyed that. host: are you ever surprised away for research takes you? guest: constantly. i think that's a good thing. i would worry if that were not case. one of the larger more broad surprises i have had is that in i would say maybe 2002 or so, you know in 2002, i used to look on conspiracy theories are differently i was sometimes hear from people who would tell me something that sounded utterly fantastic, and although i credit myself i'm keeping-- i would

sometime have the reaction am thinking this could not possibly be so and the more i have learned the more i have revised my thinking now, even when i hear the most fantastic things, my reaction tends not to be this can be so as i will look into it and find it because there have been things i have found were true that i honestly did not believe people could have done or that it could have happened and yet it had happened, so it's really expanded my idea of what people are capable of an expanded my idea of-- my appreciation of how often when we hear stories, we hear claims, how often we and i include myself in that, our tendency i think sometimes is to judge the likely veracity, but the sophistication of a person. i will think to myself, i am hearing from some person and they may not

have that much education name may not be that sophisticated and so you are more likely to think conspiracy theory or something that's not true, but then you also hear from people who are vastly credentialed and they will now tell you something you know not to be true, so the bottom line is i have a better appreciation for how often being dismissive of a conspiracy theorists is a factor of the person's education, income, social status rather than how a true what they are saying this and i think that's an important thing to understand. we would know more about history on the we would know more about events if we judge them based on actual excavating the history and judging them based on assessment of who the people are.

host: just a couple minutes left with our guest. michael, deerfield beach, florida. go-ahead. caller: what a great segue to what you are talking about. that's really a bias in blindness to huge moral inconsistencies. i have a question for you and hopefully discussion to follow. to propose covid natural herd immunity, jetty-- just letting it run through the population and public policy, dictionary definition, no politics, just pure meaning of words, textbook dictionary definition of trump covid genocide and in this case is specifically by intent eugenic genocide-- host: we have got that peer let's get an answer. herd immunity, genocide, president trump. guest: one of the problems about theories that are frankly

illogical and unattended goal is a often incorporate some small degree of accuracy. they will take something that is actually real and infused so much fiction into them and so much illogical assumption, but has that lingering credibility trick that's what happened with the term herd immunity. there is such a thing and it does exist. it's no these people are talking about. more to the point, what these people are talking that is dangerous. allowing a variant disease to rip through a community is suicidal. variant is complicated and if you want to know more about it there's an excellent book called plague time that goes into detail, but basically when you litter disease proceed unchecked you are

elevating risk of all kinds of things. for example, that disease but it's going through the population unchecked will kill many more people. we have already lost what, between half and three quarters of a million people to this illness in the country, so how many more will die if we allow it to proceed unchecked and that's assuming it becomes more variant if we have for example variants that are even more dangerous and things will escalate. facemask late to the point that we end up with variance that we cannot design a vaccine or designing more quickly. it's a suicide of proposition and also as frankly illogical it doesn't make sense to a person who has absolutely no training or education. laypeople will kind of find this completely illogical and yet it's

something that's proposed. a lot of things are being proposed, but it's really really important to not rely on things that sound logical, but rely on things like epidemiologist who can understand the things that can occur, so what's most important is that if you ask someone like dr anthony fauci or any other epidemiologist , they will all quite clearly explained to you with a fallacious concept and yet you have people thanks to the internet being catalyzed to spread these kind of very dangerous dangerous rumors i'm glad you brought it up because it cannot be-- yet be very careful not to listen to these things that ignore experts. host: harriet washington note columbia university has been our guest for the past few hours on the tv. she is the author of six books with the most recent this, "carte

blanche: the erosion of medical consent". thank you for your time this afternoon, ms. washington. guest: thank you. i'm very grateful to have been here. host: we think the callers as well for all their questions and we appreciate you joining us. this episode will be reairing shortly. >> be sure to visit c-span shop.org to get copies of harriet washington's book. >> the tv on c-span2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for book tv comes from these television companies who support c-span2 as a public service.

>> next is the tv monthly end up broke ram best-selling author harriet washington. she is the author of "medical apartheid", "deadly monopolies" and "carte blanche" about nonconsensual medical testing. host: harriet washington, you write that at age 10 albert schweitzer out of your life, out of my life changed her life. headed that happen? guest: i discovered that particular book and quickly began reading others and i was struck by his spirit of how he melded his christian beliefs, philosophical beliefs and most of all a life devoted to service i just found that incredibly compelling and this sort of like that would be very meaningful and so