Author to talk about medical ethics, treatment of African-Americans

October 4, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The University of Florida Honors Program will host an award-winning medical writer for a public lecture on Monday.

Harriet A. Washington will deliver a talk titled “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” at 7:30 p.m. in the Rion Ballroom in the Reitz Student Union on the UF campus. Washington is the author of the best-selling book of the same title, which she wrote while serving as a research fellow in ethics at Harvard Medical School. The book was chosen as one of the Publishers’ Weekly Best Books of 2006, received the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Award, and a PEN Award. It has been excerpted in periodicals such as the Washington Post, Newsweek, and The Economist.

The lecture complements the UF Honors Program’s Common Reading selection for fall 2011, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” As medical research techniques become more advanced and the resulting therapies more profitable, ethical issues come to the fore. Through readings and lectures, the program hopes to educate its students and the broader UF community about the ramifications of new research methods and findings.

Washington has taught at various institutions including the Rochester Institute of Technology, Harvard School of Public Health and Tuskegee University. She has also worked as a laboratory technician, as a medical social worker, as the manager of a poison-control center/suicide hotline, and has performed as a concert oboist. She lives in New York City with her husband, Ron DeBose.