My annual physical is fast approaching. Honestly, I am afraid to go to the doctor, regardless of how critical routine check-ups are.
But my fear of doctors is not for the same reasons that most Euro-Americans find it frightful. My fear is based on a history where “Do no harm” does not apply to me or my people.
To mitigate my fear, I usually begin my appointments by asking my physician to pretend I’m an Anglo-Saxon. Why? Because historically, Latines– and other communities of color– have not fared well at the hands of white doctors.
Many are familiar with James Marion Sims, considered the father of gynecology. Sims operated on enslaved Black women without anesthesia under the assumption they didn’t feel pain to the same degree as white women.
Others may know about the infamous forty-year-long (1932–1972) Tuskegee research study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) on 412 poor black sharecroppers in the late stages of syphilis. However, few are familiar with similar medical malpractice conducted on Latines, specifically Latinas and the constant and consistent effort to sterilize them.
The world’s first eugenics-based sterilization law occurred in Indiana in 1907. Soon, similar legislation was enacted in thirty-one other states. Approximately 60,000 women of color were sterilized due to these new laws. This “success” inspired then-Nazi German officials to implement similar laws with the Third Reich.
Ironically, shortly after the Second World War, the Allies— led by the U.S.— prosecuted Nazi doctors during the Nuremberg trials for conducting medical experiments on humans (primarily Jews). These trials led to the establishment of what eventually became the Nuremberg Code of Medical Ethics, which stated medical practitioners cannot participate in human experimentation without first obtaining the voluntary consent of participants. Additionally, unnecessary harm to the subject should be avoided at all cost.
During the 1950s, in the shadow of the Nuremberg trials, a third of Puerto Rican women were involuntarily sterilized by U.S. officials after their second child.
In California, from 1909 to 1964, some 20,000 women, mainly of Mexican descent, were sterilized. During the mid-70s, working-class Mexican immigrant women, per a filed class-action lawsuit, were sterilized at Los Angeles County General Hospital without their consent.
The sterilization of Latinas is not some unfortunate historical incident from which we have learned, become more enlightened and moved on. In our current decade, Latina undocumented immigrants experienced unnecessary hysterectomies without their consent at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, before being deported to their countries of origin.
Besides forced sterilization, Latines have also been routinely used as guinea pigs by medical professionals. Take, for example, the women of Puerto Rico who were subjected to birth control experimentation without being told they were part of a trial or the risks involved.
The first birth control pill— Enovid —was tested on Puerto Ricans from the poorest neighborhoods of San Juan. This first formulation of the drug had higher doses of hormones than today’s pills, leading to illnesses, depression and several deaths.
More recently, some 1,500 predominantly Latine and Black six-month-old babies in Los Angeles were used as human test subjects during the early 1990s when Kaiser Permanente distributed experimental measles vaccines. Even though this same vaccine was previously tested on Two-Thirds World countries with devastating results, parents of these Latine and Black babies were never informed that the vaccine was experimental with previous adverse effects.
U.S. medical experiments such as these were not limited to U.S. citizens.
From July 1946 through December 1948, U.S. doctors, in conjunction with U.S. health officials and then-Surgeon General Thomas Parran, infected 1,300 unsuspecting Guatemalans with venereal diseases to explore methods and approaches to control STDs. Low-ranking soldiers in the Guatemalan army were ordered to report to the U.S.-run clinics, where they were injected with syphilis and gonorrhea. When they returned to their homes, they suffered from the effects of the disease for decades, unable to pay for medical treatment.
Worse, they infected their wives, which was then passed on to their children. In 2010, when it was discovered what was done to them, they sued the U.S. government. Then-President Obama offered an official apology with flowery rhetoric. However, his Department of Justice requested that the compensation case be dismissed.
So yes, I am suspicious of doctors and distrust the U.S. government with my health needs. I, and many Latines (as well as other minoritized communities), have good reason to distrust the medical profession.
Is it any wonder communities of color experienced COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy when it was first rolled out?
Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
