Gynecology Invented Through The Torture of Black Women
In the 19th century, the father of modern gynecology, J. Marion Sims, conducted his research experiments on enslaved Black women. Sims performed the invasive and torturous procedures without anesthesia. J. Marion Sims’ justification for choosing not to anesthetize his test subjects was that he did not believe Black women felt pain at all. In an 1857 lecture, he stated that it was “not painful enough to justify the trouble”.
The Tuskegee Experiment The Tuskegee Institute and the Public Health Service began a study of the natural progression of syphilis involving 600 Black men (399 with syphilis, 201 uninfected) in 1932. The infected men involved in the study were never made aware of their condition upon diagnosis and believed they were being treated for “bad blood”. In exchange for their participation, the men received free medical examinations and burial insurance. They were never treated for the disease. These trials went on until 1972 when the study was exposed by The Associated Press. The remaining victims and their family members won a $10,000,000 reparations settlement which guaranteed them lifetime health coverage and burial insurance.
The Pellagra Incident Pellagra is an ailment commonly caused by a lack of niacin (vitamin B-13) in the human diet. The symptoms include skin lesions, sunlight sensitivity, dementia and ends in death. At the turn of the twentieth century, millions of people in the United States died from this disease. Scientists claimed that the cause of the disease was a toxin found in corn. In 1915, the U.S. Surgeon General ordered government funded experiments on Black prisoners afflicted with pellagra. Poor diet and niacin deficiency was found to be the cause. However, these life-saving findings were not released to the public until 1935 because the majority of Pellagra-induced deaths affected Black communities.
The Ebb Cade Experiment In 1945, African-American Ebb Cade, a 53-year-old truck driver, was secretly injected with plutonium, the substance used to make nuclear bombs. After breaking several of his bones in automobile accident, he was rushed to the emergency room. Unbeknownst to Ebb Cade, he was in the care of doctors that were also U.S. Atomic Agency employees. For six months, he was held in the hospital under the belief that they were treating his injuries. During that time, he was injected with more than 40 times the amount of plutonium an average person is exposed to in a lifetime. The doctors and researchers collected bone samples and extracted 15 teeth to monitor the effects of his exposure. Ebb Cade grew suspicious of his broken-bone treatments and escaped from the hospital. Unfortunately, Cade suffered from the brutal effects of intense radiation until he died from heart failure eight years later at the age of 61.
Weaponized Mosquito Experiment In the early 1950’s, the United States government conducted an experiment to see if mosquitoes could be weaponized. The CIA and the U.S. military released nearly a half million mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and dengue fever viruses into several Black communities in Florida. In the predominantly Black community of Avon Park, dozens of Black people became ill, eight dying as a result of this government-issued mosquito attack. Prior to this, the last known government to test weaponized mosquitoes was Nazi Germany.
Infants Injected With Test Drugs In Los Angeles In June 1990, more than 1500 six-month old Black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles were given what seemed to be a standard measles vaccination. The parents were not told that this particular vaccine, Edmonston Zagreb measles vaccine (EZ), was still in its research phase and not approved by the FDA. The EZ vaccine already had a reputation in Senegal, Guinea Bissau and Haiti, triggering an increased death rate among infant girls, most not living past the age of two. The Center for Disease Control would later confess that the infants were injected with an experimental vaccination without their parent’s knowledge. Presently, it is believed that many of these families are still unaware that their babies were used as guinea pigs.
The Toxic Sludge Experiment of Baltimore and East St. Louis In the year 2000, Federally funded researchers from John Hopkins University, the EPA, HUD, The Kennedy Krieger Institute and Department of Agriculture spread sludge from a sewage treatment plant on the lawns of nine low-income families, and a vacant lot in Baltimore and East St. Louis. The families and residents were told the sludge was safe and not informed about the toxic mixture of human and industrial waste the sludge contained. The research was conducted to see if the toxic waste absorbed into the water supply could effectively reduce lead levels in children.
Children Forcibly Vaccinated in Chad In December 2012, at least 500 children in Gouro, Chad were forcibly given the MenAfriVac during school resulting in dangerous side effects including convulsions, and paralysis. Parents were not notified of any plans to vaccination their children at school and parental consent was never requested. The forced vaccinations were part of an aggressive healthcare initiative sponsored by several internationally revered organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
Reading Women’s Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing: A Guide to Six Centuries of Women Writers Imagining Rooms of Their Own, Sharon L. Jansen
Women’s Work: An Anthology of African-American Women’s Historical Writings from Antebellum America to the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp and Kathryn Lofton
The Girl With 7 Names: A North Korean’s Defector Story, Hyeonseo Lee
Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe, Anneke Mulder-Bakker
The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World, Shelley Emling (for a fictionalised version: Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures)
National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health organisation (listed on beyond blue however it’s important that it’s visible) http://www.naccho.org.au/
Qlife Counselling and referral service for LGBTIQ+ Australians https://www.qlife.org.au/ 1800 184 527 (3pm-12am)
I’m really alarmed by the misinformation I see on social media right now, so here is a little simplified guide to WTF is going on.
(Edited to work better for tumblr, I originally just made screenshots for Twitter)
What is a NAZI?
Nazi is an
abbreviation for National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus) an ideology associated primarily with the 20th-century
German Nazi Party (especially while it was being led by Adolt Hitler). The idea
that National Socialism lived and died primarily through Hitler is actually a
myth propagated by post-war propaganda and Hollywood. America destroyed those
Nazis!! YAY!! – Wrong, They still exist. Although not under that name. Any
far-right groups is basically a “Nazi” party (many even used the term “National
Socialism” until a re-branding in the 80’s.
The
German political scientist Klaus von Beyme describes three historical phases in
the development of far-right parties in Western Europe after World War II.
From
1945 to the mid-1950s, far-right parties were marginalized, and their
ideologies were discredited due to the recent existence and defeat of Nazism –
because people were murdered. In droves. Like millions of people. Death camps
are REAL. 11 million people died, including 1.1 million children. Thus in the
years immediately following World War II, the main objective of far-right
parties was survival; achieving any political impact at all, was largely not
expected.
From
the mid-1950s to the 1970s, the so-called “populist protest phase”
emerged with sporadic electoral success. During this period, far-right parties
drew to them charismatic leaders whose profound mistrust of the political
establishment led to an “us-versus-them” mind set: “us”
being the nation’s citizenry, “them” being the politicians and
bureaucrats who were then in office; beginning in the 1980s, the electoral
successes of far-right political candidates made it possible for far-right
political parties to revitalize anti-immigration as a mainstream issue.
What does anybody in
the far right REALLY support?
How
politics work is that there is two sides. The right and the left. In the
middle, Liberalism and democracy.
The far-right isn’t
about the “working man” at all. That’s what the LEFT is about. The Left is ALL
about the public being in control. There is currently no major leftist parties
in power in America (Democrats are closer to the middle - center-right,
actually. They just get called the left party because nobody is).
What
the right really advocates is private economic ownership (aka the rich getting’
richer), racial hierarchy (whites better than everyone else) and Social
Darwinism (which is the idea that “weak” humans, aka the old, the sick, etc,
deserve to be removed. That means gradually killed. Don’t get attached to your
grandma). Extreme right-wing politicians are usually extreme nationalists
(“bringing back JOBS to AMERICANS” = eventually they will exploit you as
workers void of rights), and are opposed to immigration. They are also
profoundly chauvinistic (that means women are seen as inferior).
Is Trump a
representative of the extreme right?
Most
definitely, since he supports all that was listed above. Loudly, too.
So, Trump isn’t
going to really help the so-called American Working Man?
Who
even is that? Everybody American works, no matter who they are. But if you mean
that you’re a white middle class American, then you’ll get candy for a year and
then be abused just like the rest of us. You’re already losing your rights to
free information and healthcare. So, you might as well join the fight with us.
Who is Richard B.
Spencer?
Richard
Bertrand Spencer (born May 11, 1978) is an American white nationalist, known
for promoting white supremacist views. He is president of the National Policy
Institute, a white nationalist think-tank, and Washington Summit Publishers, an
independent publishing firm. Spencer has stated that he rejects the description
of white supremacist, and describes himself as an identitarian. He advocates
for a white homeland for a “dispossessed white race” and calls for
“peaceful ethnic cleansing” to halt the “deconstruction” of
European culture.
The
Identitarian movement is a European political movement that started in France
in 2002 and is basically all about destroying anybody who is a shade darker
then milk. The Identitarian
movement has a close linkage to members of the German New Right, aka Neo-Nazis.
So
this guy is definitely a “Nazi”.
Was it ok to punch
him?
It’s
never ok to punch someone who has not provoked you. HOWEVER, what Spencer is
doing is saying: I want to hurt people. I want to hurt people a lot. Not today.
But, tomorrow, maybe. His very existence and allegiance is a constant menace.
Picture it this way, if you met a guy in the park and he said hi, I don’t have
a gun today, but I might tomorrow, and I might come back to shoot people, would
you just ignore him? No. So in conclusion,
march peacefully, but do punch Nazis.
This is the American scale.
I really want to point this out because it’s a legitimate thing that Trump is far more extreme right than you may think. It also explains why this is a thing that happened. See, compared to many other countries in the world, my own included, the American political spectrum is offset to the right.
So what OP said about there not being an extreme left is absolutely true, there’s barely a left to begin with.
I’d like to point out that this is a recorded phenomenon in political science and not my own biased interpretation of your politics. Noam Chomsky—cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist among other things (this guy pops up in my university classes from time to time; the dude’s part of the curriculum whether that says anything to you or not)—has been pretty outspoken about this.
“… so what [Republicans have] done is mobilized sectors of the population that have always been there but have never really been politically mobilized, like Evangelical Christians, the nativists who are afraid that ‘they’ are taking our country away from us, white racists, … gun-people who are so terrified that they have to carry their guns into church because maybe somebody’ll come after them.
You know, these sectors of the population are there, and that’s now the base of the Republican party.”
So, this election night was a shocking, absolutely horrifying blow to my American friends. Even my friends here in Canada couldn’t come to terms with it. I saw panic attacks, fears about even visiting American relatives in the States again, and even a depressive loss of faith in humanity. How could this be where the world is today?
Because, it’s this gradual shift to the right that’s so insidious, that happened for a variety of complex reasons, I’m sure, that can to some make it seem like the current Republican party is a reasonable center-right party, when in actuality they are legitimately far right. And as such, able to take advantage of these small groups on the outside that have desperately wanted a podium for a long time.
So, no, you’re not imagining it, America. This isn’t normal. Punch some Nazis, if that’s what it takes.
side note: This is what we call the Overton Window and that is a really good visual of it.
It’s also important to point out that this isn’t just the United States and it never really was. Even now, because of Brexit and Trump’s election, the radical nationalist/fascist/racist/sexist/whatever end of the political spectrum is now being galvanized globally with the success and encouragement of this and aided by political echo-chambers in media, the internet, and small communities.
Nationalist movements are picking up again in France and Germany and even Canada now has at least three people running for the Conservative Party leadership on a Trump-like storm.
