Black History Fun Fact Friday – Medical Apartheid

This Week’s episode of Black History Fun Fact Friday is the recommendation of Harriet Washington’s Groundbreaking book Medical Apartheid.

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Medical Apartheid is about the deliberate infection of people with deadly or debilitating diseases, exposure of people to biological and chemical weapons, human radiation experiments, injection of people with toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical experiments, interrogation and torture experiments, tests involving mind-altering substances, and a wide variety of others. Medical experiments on children, the sick, mentally disabled individuals, and most especially Blacks, often under the guise of “medical treatment” go back for centuries.

 

ea_d_38868_0_MissEversBoysOne well-known case of experimentation on Blacks is The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African-American men in Alabama. Mrs. Evers Boys starring Alfred Woodard and Lawrence Fishburne is a movie modeled after this experiment. The men were told that they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government and for forty long years had to tackle the deadly side effects of a disease many of them didn’t know they had. Also, it must be stated that many of these men did not previously have the disease before the experiments began.

The Public Health Service started working on this study in 1932 during the Great Depression, in collaboration with the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama. Investigators enrolled in the study a total of 600 impoverished sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama. Of these men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and about 201 did not have the disease. Because these men were poor and often had no access to free medical care, the enticing sound of free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance for participating in the study prompted many of the most reluctant to take part. None of the men infected was ever told he had the disease, nor was any treated for it with penicillin after this antibiotic became proven for treatment.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for “bad blood“, a local term for various illnesses that include syphilis, anemia, and fatigue.

9780385509930_custom-11bb499dd9e2430b63af7a3b00d4cbf9b26dd62c-s6-c30The product of years of research, Medical Apartheid is an excellent book and source of study by Harriet A. Washington on the dark history of medical experimentation on Blacks from the colonial times to the present. She speaks in depth about the history of such organizations as Planned Parenthood and The Negro Project, known previously as The American Birth Control League (whose true purpose was to rid the world of so-called “weak breeds” who were downgrading the American population through a system known as Eugenics), to other frightening tools on unwilling and unknown people.

Throughout the 1840s, J. Marion Sims for example, often referred to as “the father of gynecology”, performed surgical experiments on enslaved African women, without anesthesia. The women—one of whom was operated on 30 times—regularly died from infections resulting from the experiments. In order to test one of his theories about the causes of trismus (locked jaw) in infants, Sims performed experiments where he used a shoemaker’s awl to move around the skull bones of the babies of enslaved women. He also addicted the women in his surgical experiments to morphine, only providing the drugs after surgery was already complete, in order to make them more compliant.

A documentary that is a great compliment to Harriet’s book is called MAAFA, an explosive exposé of the racist eugenics agenda of the abortion industry in the United States. It makes the case that, though abortionists claim to advocate privacy, women’s rights, and reproductive choice, their true motive is racial genocide and ethnic cleansing and goes back for centuries.

MAAFA can be watched for free on YouTube HERE.

Get Medical Apartheid on Amazon HERE.

 

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And that’s it for this week’s episode of Black History Fun Facts. Here’s Last Week’s Post in case you missed it:

Week #5: Negro Spirituals

What I Learned About Blogging, Writing, and Life #MayChallengeDay 11-12

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Sometimes we just want the easy answer. The easy answer, and the smooth path. We want to lower mountains, and bring them down to our understanding. And we want as many tips on how to do so as is possible; we want things to be as easy as possible. But what I have learned, whether about blogging, writing, or life in general is this: You can have all the talent, and all of the opportunity in the world but if you do not have the persistence, the endurance, or the discipline to keep working then you do not have anything. Determination is called drive for a reason, it moves you.

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May you never forget where you come from

May you never forget who you are

May your trust be earned

May your love be genuine

May you listen not to reply

May you listen instead to understand

May your eyes speak integrity

May your lips echo the eyes

May you treat others, the way that you treat yourself

May you treat yourself, the way that you treat others

May you defeat fear with a smile

May you smile through the fear

May your heart be content

May contentment be in your heart

May you not complain today

May you use your time wisely

May wisdom be the orchestra of your time

May you see the beauty in every day

May today be

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Go Into Yourself

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“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart…This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity..”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Building – When The Writing Begins

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Writing does not begin until I can see the entire story, even the end. It is a must that I can see how the story ends. You see for me writers are builders, architects if you will. A book starts with an idea, but not all ideas should become books. Not all ideas are story fabric. Some ideas are meant to be stored for a later time, while others require immediate attention. When an idea enters my mind, I first examine if it’s worthy enough to mature into something more. Is it powerful enough? Can it change lives? Is it different? In short, an idea has to be special, like a rare diamond or a spring of water in the desert. Can we want for it? Does it make us hunger? Does it make us thirst? Not only is it a nice idea, but is it necessary? For me, it has to be something so powerful that it has the potential to grow; an idea that is without potential to grow is not an idea that is fit to become a book.

When I have an idea that is worthy, the writing doesn’t begin just yet. I mean sure, there’s a paragraph here, a sentence there, a potential character name somewhere over there. Lots of things can change as I am seeking to stretch the idea into something more; to mold it into something tangible. The title may change, the name of the characters may change, the setting, plot. I am picking out pieces and adding some. I am changing colors and creating lives. I am an examiner of bricks and mortar to see what fits. Restoring and conserving ideas, coming up with new ways to use them. It is even possible that I may begin to sketch out a stretch of chapters. However, the writing has not yet begun. It does not yet begin because I cannot see the entire work on the page, just shades of pencil and splashes of ink but there’s no real story there. No, words on a page does not mean I have written just yet. Words on a page are merely the sand on the shores, the bricks in the pile, the outer frame of a building with no substance.

When I can see the story move in my head; when I can see it walk its way around from camera to camera; when the dust kicks up and there are actually footprints in the plot; when I can see people speaking and acting and living, that moment when the wind blows for the first time. This is when the writing starts for me. The writing begins when I can hear the story breathe. When I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, the full construction on the page. Even how the book will end and this is when I can truly set out to navigate my way though this world. I am a spectator to a movie that has already begun, a director who must choreograph each scene. This is when I’ve began to write the first draft of a book. It is the moment when I know that the original idea is strong enough, and has the potential to be story fabric.

The Honor of the Mother Goddesses #MayChallengeDay7-8

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For many people, today is a time of reflection on childhood upbringing, celebration, and honor of mothers, grandmothers, and mother guardians in their lives. It’s a day of BBQs, gatherings, and festivities. However, what is the truth concerning the origin of this day? Is it the honor of mothers or Goddesses?

The worship of women go back centuries, decades, worlds…. you get the point. In fact, the first form of the worship of women began with the worship of the Gods. When The Watchers fell, a class of angels in which some came down to have sex with human women and produced therefore on the earth a race of Giants, it was because they became obsessed with human women and mankind’s ability to reproduce. They wanted to come down, get themselves wives, and have them children. In short, these Watcher angels began to worship the woman’s womb. In fact, in ancient cultures, women were worshiped as a way into heaven and thus are the beginnings of the sacred feminine.

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Fast forward some and we can trace Mother’s Day back to the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome. However, it can actually be traced back further than this. Greece and Rome got their worship of the Gods from Egypt after plundering Egypt and taking the worship to Europe. The worship can also be traced back to ancient Babylon and ultimately from the direct worship of the Gods themselves. The honoring of the mother goddess can be traced, not only back to the Greek Goddess Rhea, but also back to Nimrod’s Mother-Wife Semiramis, and the Mother Goddess Isis of ancient Egypt. In fact, The Mother Goddesses, also known as The Queen of Heaven, have been worshiped in all cultures. For Greek and Rome specifically, mother goddesses were worshiped during the springtime with religious festivals. The ancient Greeks paid tribute to the Goddess Rhea, the wife of Cronus, known as the Mother of the Gods (Queen of Heaven) and the Romans held a three-day Roman festival in Mid-March called Hilaria, to honor the Roman Goddess Magna Mater, or Great Mother.

As Christianity spread throughout Europe, the honoring of the Mother Goddesses became disguised and the worship of the Mother Goddesses conformed to the honor of the “Mother Church”. In fact, the worship of the Gods and Goddesses, which in ancient times was simply called Paganism, became part of Christianity by the Council of Nicaea — the group of people who decided what doctrines should make up Christianity. By Christianity, I do not mean the original biblical practice of the saints, brothers, and prophets who did not call themselves Christians but were referred to as Kristianos meaning smeared ones – a derogatory term placed on them because they said they were smeared with the blood of the messiah. We’re talking about the Christianity that sprang from the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council after they decided to take pagan beliefs with biblical ones. To do this successfully meant to take what the pagans were already worshiping and change the names of the pagan gods to those that would appear to correlate with scripture, and to change the worship of the Gods and Goddesses to that which appeared in some way, biblical.

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They disguised the worship of the Gods by conforming them to the worship of something that would appear more innocent. The ancient pagan festival of Ceres, Goddess of Agriculture (from which we get the word Cereal) became Thanksgiving; the ancient pagan festival of Saturnalia, celebration of the Winter Solstice, became Christmas; the ancient pagan festival of Ostara (or Eostre) representing the Spring Equinox became Easter, and The fourth Sunday in Lent, a 40-day fasting period before Easter (also pagan) became known as Mothering Sunday. To show appreciation for their mothers, the people often brought gifts or a “mothering cake” and over time, it began to coincide with the celebration of the Mother Church. Mothering Sunday and Mother Church eventually merged into a single holiday called Mother’s Day. On this day, the worship of the Goddesses continued in the form of honoring mothers. The day always falls on the second Sun-day of May, and like so many other holidays rooted in pagan sun-worship including Father’s Day which always falls on the third Sun-day of June, it was important that the day fell on a day in honor of the pagans most powerful god — The Sun.