Medical and scientific research in the United States, often funded by governmental agencies, has a deep and intricate history with using minorities for unethical and controversial research. These experiments effected racial relations, as health care policy regarding race. Unfortunately this is an issue that has been plaguing the United States for hundreds of years, from the beginning of scientific racism to the prolonged effects of medical experimentation.
Scientific Racism
Scientific racism is a phenomenon that’s been in use since the start of human civilization. Documented human racism stems from the Graeco-Roman area around the fifth century B.C., twenty-five hundred …show more content…
While these ideas were present during the late 1600s and mid-1700s, they really gained popularity during the 19th century. Monogenism is currently the school of thought most greatly held by the scientific community, following research of human DNA and analyzing ancient bones found in the continent of Africa (Klein, 2009). This idea, however, is religious in origin. The three biggest religions in the modern world, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, all have creation stories of the original human beings, Adam and Eve. As such, believed that all races came from the same one race. The idea is that later the races migrated to separate parts of the planet, and the change in genetics and skin pigment come from environmental …show more content…
Publications now considered prolific for any research on topics, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica (1798) published articles on “Negros” using rhetoric such as “The color of the skin and the crookedness of the hair are only outward signs of many far deeper differences, including…temperament, disposition, character…instincts, customs, emotional traits, and disease.” These were unsavory traits, and by publishing them in explicit connection to blacks it advanced and solidified the idea that whites were superior to