Minority Health and Health Equity Archive
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769
Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.
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Item Race, biology, and health care: reassessing a relationship.(1990) Byrd, W MRecent reports reaffirm huge disparities in the health of blacks compared to other Americans. These disparities persist in part because of the current attempt by health policy makers to frame racially based health differences in non-racial terms. Yet an historical analysis shows that since ancient times, blacks have been the victims of racism in the biomedical sciences; health-system discrimination and deprivation; and later, medical and scientific exploitation. Race- and class-based structuring of the health delivery system has combined with other factors, including physicians' attitudes conditioned by their participation in slavery, and the scientific myth of black biological and intellectual inferiority, to establish a "slave health deficit" that has never been corrected. Until the persistent institutional racism and racial discrimination in health policy, health delivery, and medical educational systems are eradicated, African-Americans will continue to experience poor health outcome.Item African American Physicians and Organized Medicine, 1846-1968: Origins of a Racial Divide(2008) Baker, R. B.; Washington, H. A.; Olakanmi, O.; Savitt, T. L.; Jacobs, E. A.; Hoover, E.; Wynia, M. K.Like the nation as a whole, organized medicine in the United States carries a legacy of racial bias and segregation that should be understood and acknowledged. For more than 100 years, many state and local medical societies openly discriminated against black physicians, barring them from membership and from professional support and advancement. The American Medical Association was early and persistent in countenancing this racial segregation. Several key historical episodes demonstrate that many of the decisions and practices that established and maintained medical professional segregation were challenged by black and white physicians, both within and outside organized medicine. The effects of this history have been far reaching for the medical profession and, in particular, the legacy of segregation, bias, and exclusion continues to adversely affect African American physicians and the patients they serve.Item Intentional Infection of Vulnerable Populations in 1946-1948(2010) Frieden, Thomas R.; Collins, Francis S.Unethical uses of humans as research subjects represent appalling chapters in the history of medicine. 1 To ensure that effective protections against such abuses continue to evolve and improve, it is essential to continue to learn from historical examples. Sadly, a new example has recently come to light. While conducting research on the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis, 2 Wellesley College Professor Susan Reverby recently reviewed the archived papers of John Cutler, a US Public Health Service (PHS) medical officer and a Tuskegee investigator. Instead of finding Tuskegee records, however, Reverby found the records of another unethical study. In this study, vulnerable populations in Guatemala—mentally incapacitated patients, prison inmates, sex workers, and soldiers—were intentionally exposed to sexually transmitted infections (syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid). The work was directed by Cutler and was done with the knowledge of his superiors, including then Surgeon General Thomas Parran Jr. Funded with a grant fromItem Records of Dr. John C. Cutler(2011) Cutler, John C.(From National Archives Press Release) From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Venereal Disease Research Laboratory (VDRL) and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau collaborated with several government agencies in Guatemala on U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded studies involving deliberate exposure of human subjects with bacteria that cause sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Guatemalan partners included the Guatemalan Ministry of Health, the National Army of the Revolution, the National Mental Health Hospital, and the Ministry of Justice. Studies were conducted under the on-site direction of John C. Cutler, MD in Guatemala City, under the supervision of R.C. Arnold MD and John F. Mahoney, MD of the USPHS VDRL in Staten Island, New York; the primary local collaborator was Dr. Juan Funes, chief of the VD control division of the Guatemalan Sanidad Publica. According to a “Syphilis Summary Report” and experimental logs in the archives, syphilis studies included Commercial Sex Workers, prisoners, and patients in the mental hospital. In the series of syphilis studies, a total of 696 subjects of individual experiments (some representing the same patients involved in several experiments) were exposed to infection (by sexual contact or inoculation).Item National Archives Releases John Cutler Papers Online(2011) UNSPECIFIEDAtlanta, GA…The National Archives at Atlanta announced that on March 29, 2011, it will release online the papers of Dr. John C. Cutler. Dr. Cutler, a former employee of the U.S. Public Health Service, 1942-1967, was involved in research on Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners, and mental health patients who were exposed to the syphilis bacteria. The collection is available online [http://www.archives.gov/research/health/cdc-cutler-records] and at the National Archives at Atlanta, located at 5780 Jonesboro Road, Morrow, Georgia, 30260. This collection which consists of approximately 12,000 pages of correspondence, reports, photographs, and patient records was donated in September of 1990 to the University of Pittsburgh by Dr. Cutler. In September 2010, the University contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to request the transfer of the material to the Federal government. After examining the material, it was determined that they were Federal records and they were transferred to the National Archives at Atlanta in October, 2010.