‘A Cautionary Tale’
Harriet Washington ’76 has long been haunted by the sordid, and often gruesome, exploitation of black people by some medical researchers.
As a Rochester undergraduate, when she was supposed to be studying Chaucer in Rush Rhees or preparing for a test in genetics, she immersed herself in titles like
Burma Doctor and
My Patients Were Zulus, books which detailed the adventures of 19th-century medical researchers trying out new techniques on unsuspecting “natives.”
“I fell in love with these medical adventurers as they went off to these exotic lands,” says Washington, who lives in Manhattan with her husband, Ron DeBose. “Their memoirs portrayed the march of medicine, but I was