1) Since the pandemic started, people have been saying science has been politicized by this administration as if this is something new. Science *is* and has always been political, especially for Black folks in this country.

A THREAD.

2) In the mid 1800s, J. Marion Sims, the “Father of Modern Gynecology”, (who enslaved Black people) who discovered the vaginal speculum and the surgical procedure to fix vesico- vaginal fistulas experimented on Black women who were enslaved...

3) (and who could not given consent and without anesthesia) so these women would be able to continue having babies who were considered valuable property.

4) In the early 1800s, Dr. Charles Caldwell (who also enslaved Black people) used phrenology to justify slavery. Caldwell argued that the bumps on Black people’s heads made them “tameable” and therefore amenable to being enslaved.

5) State-sponsored eugenics programs in over 33 states from 1900s to 1970s targeted Black women and other women of color, mentally ill, poor and immigrant women.

6) The U.S. Public Health Service sponsored the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Male Negro” from 1932-1972 enrolling 600 Black men from impoverished rural Alabama allowing 200 of them to suffer with syphilis and never giving them the treatment penicillin.

7) Science is and has always been political, especially with respect to how Black Americans have been treated in this country.

8) I’m coming back to this thread to give all respect due to the Black women who have been writing about these issues for years. Read @DorothyERoberts’ Killing the Black Body and @haw95’s Medical Apartheid. #CiteBlackWomen

https://twitter.com/munchydaplug/status/1277202570809835521?s=21 https://twitter.com/munchydaplug/status/1277202570809835521