"The much bewailed racial health gap is not a gap, but a chasm wider and deeper than a mass grave. This gulf has riven our nation so dramatically that it appears as if we were considering the health profiles of people in two different countries- a medical apartheid. Researchers have proffered a cornucopia a series for this medical divide, many of which focus upon putative biological dimorphisms, especially genetic differences.
But in dissecting the shameful medical apartheid, and important cause is usually neglected: the history of ethically flawed medical experimentation with African Americans. Such research has played a pivotal role in forging the fear of medicine that helps perpetuate our nation's racial health gulf. Historically, African Americans have been subjected to exploitative, abusive involuntary experimentation at a rate far higher than other ethnic groups.
Thus, although the heightened African American wariness of medical research and institutions reflects a situational hypervigilance, it is neither a baseless fear of harm nor a fear of imaginary harms. A "paranoid" label is often affixed to Blacks who are wary of participating in medical research.
However, not only is paranoid a misnomer but it is also symbolic of a dangerous misunderstanding. That is why I refer to African American fears of medical professionals and institutions as iatrophobia, coined from the Greek word iatros ("healer") and phobia ("fear"). Black iatrophobia is the fear of medicine."
Introduction- Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington
