Latest / The Breakfast Club / IDKMYDE: Medical Apartheid and Mommy

Transcript

IDKMYDE: Medical Apartheid and Mommy · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with something personal. On May fifth, twenty
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: twenty four, I lost my mom. She was complaining about
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: her stomach hurtain, so we took her to the er.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Hours later, she was still in pain and they finally
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: moved her upstairs to the ICU. Forty five minutes later,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: she was on a breathing two. Her organs were shutting
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: down because of sepsis, and just like that, she was gone.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. I didn't know.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Maybe I didn't know. I didn't know. Maybe you didn't
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: didn't know. Well, let me tell y'all, losing your mom
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: is hard enough, but when you're black, you have this
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: extra layer of PTSD. Why because you know, Black women
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: are often dismissed in the medical field. They're overlooked, ignored.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: And it's not just a feeling, it's facts. There's a
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: book Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington, and it lays out
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the long dark history of how black folks, especially black women,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: have been used, abused, and experimented on in the name
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: of science. From slavery to right now, let me break
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: it down for you. Did you know there's still this
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: misconception that black women have a higher threshold for pain.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: And I know Mama made miracles every Thanksgiving, every Christmas
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and every birthday, but their white doctors were thinking black
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: women were superheroes for real, or she's black, she can
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: take it. What And if you want to know how
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: deep this rabbit hole goes, let's talk about Henrietta Lax.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Since went to the doctor in nineteen fifty one for
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: cervical cancer and without her knowledge, they took her sales
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: then named them healer seals h e LA And those
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: sales turned out to be immortal, like they could survive
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: and multiply in labs which had never been done before.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: They helped develop vaccines, cancer treatments IVF. Heeler sales have
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: saved millions of lives. But here's the part that'll make
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: your blood boil. Henrietta Lax never gave consents and her
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: family never saw a dime. Pharmaceutical companies made billions off
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: those seals while her kids and grandkids were struggling to
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: pay for health care. It made a bunch of dollars,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: but a damn sure don't make no sense. So when
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: we talk about black folks in the medical field, we're
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: not just talking about distrust. We're talking about a system,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a system that has dismissed us, stolen from us, and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: experimented on us without shame. And for me, every time
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I think about my mom's last hours, it's hard not
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: to wonder if she wasn't black. Wol They have taken
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: her pain a little more seriously, but they have moved faster.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: These questions hunt me, and I know I'm not alone.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: That's why it's so important for us to know our
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: history and advocate for ourselves, because if we don't speak up,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: who will. Medical Apartheid a book by Harriet Washington. It
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: was something that I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either,