During these last two years of dealing with Covid, I have seen people's public reactions to the virus and vaccines. Many people of all races have not taken the virus seriously and have disobeyed the mask mandate and many are refusing to get the Covid vaccine. I took the virus seriously and was vaccinated, but many in my family were very skeptical of the vaccine and did not take it. My family is black, they watch the news and have seen that black Americans are the ones suffering the most from Covid. I've wondered why they are so wary of the vaccine when it protects us. Recently, over Thanksgiving, I heard one of my family members say that the vaccine was “not made for Black people.” Hearing this shocked me because it made me realize that many Black family members fear the medical industry and are very wary of what medical professionals have said about Covid. This prompted me to investigate the source of this mistrust towards doctors and I was shocked to see how deep this situation runs. The medical field has abused and neglected the black body for over a century, dating back to slavery and continuing to the present day. Slavery allowed black bodies to be used as test subjects for white doctors to advance the medical field. Since then, throughout history, white doctors have abused their power to manipulate and harm black people for scientific purposes. I believe that racism is entrenched in the healthcare and medical industries and that Black Americans suffer from it. My research led me to ask: How has a racist medical field's historical abuse and neglect of the Black body led Black Americans to be fearful and distrustful of the healthcare industry? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The issue of medical abuse begins with slavery where the black body was already subjected to abuse by white owners. Slaves had no ownership over their own bodies, which allowed slave owners to sell them to other people for experimentation. Writer Stephen Kenny talks about historians James Breeden and Todd Savitt conducting in-depth studies of the exploitation of black slaves. Their research found that slave bodies were trafficked into Virginia medical schools so that these bodies could be used to educate students. During that time, future white doctors viewed slaves as commodities they could use to improve their medical knowledge. They also believed that slaves were disposable, so if they experimented on them and the slave died, they could always get another slave. Breeden and Savitt also discovered that the body parts of black slaves were used in medical societies for dissection and observation. A case that shows the horrendous abuse of medical power during the period of slavery is the case of Charleston Elias S. Bennett and an anonymous child slave. According to Bennett's diary entries, he discovered a small tumor on a slave girl when she was only four weeks old. He saw it as a research opportunity and decided to surgically remove the tumor together with another medical trainee. During this time, most of the tools and medications we have today did not exist, making this procedure extremely dangerous. Bennett continued to perform the surgery and noted that many complications occurred during the surgery. As the girl grew, the growth of the tumor did notnothing but worsened and she eventually died, most likely due to Bennett's interference. For these doctors, the black body was not human, it was just a subject that they could continually use to conduct unethical procedures on. Some of these doctors who are praised today for making groundbreaking medical discoveries are people who have consistently abused black people. Writer Harriet A. Washington is the author of numerous articles and books on the medical torture of blacks, in one of her articles exposed the famous Dr. James Marion Sims. Washington writes that he once thought James Sims, also known as the father of gynecology, was the "medical hero" for which history has named him. After further research, Washington discovered that Sims had conducted many unethical and unnecessary surgeries on female slaves. It would use Black women to conduct experimental surgeries to correct fistulas that can occur due to prolonged labor. Without the consent of the slave women, he made cuts in their bladder, vagina and rectum without putting them to sleep with anesthesia. This would leave women with lifelong problems. She took what she learned from experiments on slave women and used it to help the white wives of slave owners. Unlike slave women, he put them to sleep using chloroform, but horrifically allowed the women's husbands to have intercourse with them while they slept. Washington found in further research that even though Sims claimed he wanted to treat enslaved women; it would leave most with infections to pursue other research opportunities. There was a statue of James Sims in Central Park that was torn down when it was put on display, but the damage it caused still lives on. Because of his journal entries stating that black slaves could endure the pain of his procedures, he began the widespread lie that blacks cannot feel pain. This lie still impacts Black patients today and has become ingrained in the history of medicine. Black bodies have continued to suffer at the hands of a corrupt medical industry, and the industry has been able to thrive off of this suffering. We expect doctors to always be professional and have a certain sense of respect towards their patients, but this is not what Henrietta Lacks experienced. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five who was diagnosed with cervical cancer by Dr. Howard Jones at Johns Hopkins. He underwent numerous radiation treatments to treat his cancer. During the treatment his cells were taken and studied by Dr. George Gey. Gey found his cells remarkable because instead of dying, they duplicated. Lacks eventually died of cancer, but John Hopkins still had his cells. Without the permission of Henrietta Lacks or her family, they began using her cells for research and still do so today. His cells have been used to make incredible medical discoveries and even played a role in the creation of the Covid 19 vaccine. While medical companies have made millions from his cells, Lack's family has fought these companies who continue to profit from her. Henrietta Lacks was continually disrespected after her death, most medical institutions, including John Hopkins, did not even recognize Henrietta until her family began paying more attention to her story. This gross and invasive abuse of the body has only gotten worse throughout history. One of the most notorious cases of medical abuse is the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study. The Tuskegee syphilis study was a case that showed “the dangers of uncontrolled medical insanity and the sexualized power of doctors overinnocent” (Reverby). Black men trusted these white doctors when they volunteered for the study, but in return they were manipulated. In 1932 the US Public Health Service conducted a study on black men who already had syphilis. The men were under the impression that these doctors would help them cure their disease, but they did not cure it for 40 years so they could study its effects. Doctors claimed the volunteers had "bad blood" and subjected them to a series of painful and unnecessary surgeries. The government allowed this unethical experiment to go on for years, even after some of the volunteers' wives and children were diagnosed with syphilis. The government only put an end to this in 1972, when a new investigator brought this story to the media. The Tuskegee Experiment left a stain on the medical field and was the turning point in how black Americans viewed the healthcare industry. After 1972, when the Tuskegee study was brought to light, many black Americans were disturbed and fearful of the medical industry. The people who were supposed to help them abused them and took advantage of the black body. While this abuse did not happen to all Black Americans, it still traumatized them to see how racism is entrenched in the medical field. Black Americans were so afraid of doctors that they began to avoid them. This has led to an increase in preventable deaths and illnesses among Black Americans. Medical author John Hoberman states that the Tuskegee Experiment initiated a dangerous view of black health and led black Americans to believe rumors about the medical industry. Many black Americans believed that the AIDS virus was an orchestrated government plot to kill the black community. This is not a factual statement, but relationships were bad between white doctors and black patients and tensions were high, so they believed it to be true. Relationships between Black doctors and patients continued to deteriorate and impact the healthcare system. Hoberman provides a different take on why relationships between white doctors and black patients can be highly conflicted. When some black patients come in with diabetes, drug problems, or gunshot wounds, white doctors begin to stereotype black patients and find it difficult to feel bad for them. Some white doctors have the idea that black patients are prone to violence, and this type of thinking influences the level of care black patients receive. Hoberman says there may also be times when black patients can give white doctors a hard time, but this can happen with all patients. Regardless of whether the patient gives the doctor a hard time or there is a certain view of black patients, the doctor is the one who is informed. The doctor is responsible for the patient and it is his duty to treat him with the best care. The patient is the one who needs help and cannot control the narrative that has been painted about him. There is an obvious bias among white doctors against black patients that begins in doctor training. I, as someone who does not practice medicine, believe that the medical field is built on racism and the problem is racist doctors. Dr. Larry Dossey has a different look at what the real problem is. He says the white-dominated industry has been slow to recognize racial biases and fears of black patients. Many white doctors are blind to the discrimination and unconscious biases they can bring. They are unaware of this bias because the medical knowledge they have is steeped in racism. The problem may not be in the medical industry or doctors,but in the teaching that has been handed down for decades. Much of the knowledge that doctors now know was discovered by experimenting on black patients, but this is not taught to them. Dr. Amanda Calhoun states that “the medical system is not tainted by isolated historical atrocities like Henrietta Lacks, Havasupai, and Tuskegee; it is steeped in racism” (Calhoun). Most doctors are unaware of these atrocities because they have been swept under the rug and ignored. Doctors like Calhoun and Dossey argue that racism in the medical field impacts both doctors and patients. Doctor's treatment of Black patients is due to a lack of recognition that the Black body has been dehumanized for decades. Although I agree with both Dossey and Calhoun that some white doctors are simply misguided. This does not justify the fact that there is still a disproportionate rate of American deaths due to the ignorance of white doctors. Today, Black bodies are still overlooked, and many times when Black patients approach White doctors, their concerns are dismissed. like paranoia. Black pain is not treated at the same level as white pain. Some doctors are reluctant to give strong painkillers to Black patients while they are recovering from surgery. Bias manifests itself in situations like this or when black men are 30% less likely to receive appropriate diagnostic procedures. Black patients are also more likely to be misdiagnosed than any other race. When things like this happen constantly, it's understandable why Black Americans have a hard time asking the medical industry for help. Black mothers who rely on the medical field are terrified of giving birth because of the care they receive in hospitals. Black mothers are five times more likely to die during childbirth than white mothers because their concerns and pain are often ignored. Black children also suffer due to negligent medical field, government statistics show that infant mortality rates of black children are the highest. Black mothers are traumatized by painful births and even the death of their babies. Whether or not white doctors are aware of the bias, it is costing Black patients their lives and adding to generational medical trauma. Decades of medical trauma and ongoing questions in the medical field show why Black Americans are so reluctant to take the Covid vaccine. This reluctance to take the vaccine negatively impacts the Black community. Black Americans are 1.4 times more likely to contract Covid than white Americans and 2 times more likely to be killed by it. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that of the 71% of Black Americans who knew people affected by Covid, only 42% would be willing to take the vaccine. They are afraid of what is in the vaccine and have multiple reasons not to trust the vaccine. The tense relationship between doctors and black patients does not help encourage them to get this vaccination. It is in times like these that Black Americans' distrust of the medical field is truly dangerous. They are neglecting their health and the medical advances that should help them. Black Americans are the most vulnerable during this time of Covid, but they feel like they can't trust anything. Many Black Americans believe the vaccine will do them more harm than good. There may be no way to alleviate the fear and mistrust that Black Americans have toward the medical system, but there may be a way to prepare the next generation of doctors to do better. relationship between black doctors and patients, there must be a.