Search results for ""Author Harriet A Washington""

Is it possible to catch autism or OCD the same way we catch the flu? Can a child's contact with cat litter lead to schizophrenia? In her eye-opening new book, Harriet Washington, author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Medical Apartheid, reveals that we can in fact "catch" mental illness. In INFECTIOUS MADNESS, Washington presents the new germ theory, which posits that many instances of Alzheimer's, OCD, and schizophrenia are caused by viruses, prions, and bacteria, and that with antibiotics, vaccinations, and other strategies, these cases can be easily prevented or treated. Packed with cutting-edge research and tantalizing mysteries, INFECTIOUS MADNESS is rich in science, characters, and practical advice on how to protect yourself and your children from exposure to infectious threats that could sabotage your mental and physical health.

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A powerful indictment of the notion of hereditary intelligence, A Terrible Thing to Waste shows how environmental racism drives the black-white IQ gap and explains what can be done to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities.The 1994 publication of the The Bell Curve and its controversial thesis catapulted the topic of genetic racial differences in IQ to the forefront of renewed and heated debate. Now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste, award-winning science writer Harriet A. Washington adds her incisive analysis to the fray. She takes apart the spurious notion of intelligence as an inherited trait, pointing instead to environmental racism -- a confluence of institutional factors that relegate marginalized communities to living and working near sites of toxic waste, pollution, and urban decay -- as the prime cause of the reported black-white IQ gap. Investigating the deleterious heavy metals, neurotoxins, deficient prenatal care, bad nutrition, and pathogens as the main factors influencing intelligence, Washington explains why certain communities are so disproportionally affected and what can be done to remedy the problem.Featuring extensive scientific research and Washington's sharp, lively reporting, A Terrible Thing to Waste is sure to outrage, transform the conversation and inspire debate.

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“Urgent, alarming, riveting, and essential.” —Ibram X. Kendi Carte Blanche is the alarming tale of how the right of Americans to say “no” to risky medical research is being violated. Patients' right to give or withhold consent is supposed to be protected by law, but for decades medical research has been conducted on trauma victims—who are disproportionately people of color—without their consent or even their knowledge. Harriet A. Washington, the author of Medical Apartheid, is again exposing a large-scale violation of patient, civil, and human rights. She reveals that the abuse first began in the military: In 1990, the Department of Defense forced an experimental anthrax vaccine on ground troops headed for the Persian Gulf. After a 1996 loophole to federal law permitted research to be conducted even on private citizens, particularly trauma patients, the military has pressed ahead to impose nonconsensual testing of the dangerous and sometimes lethal blood substitute PolyHeme among civilians, quietly using it on more than 20,000 non-consenting victims. Since then, more than a dozen studies have used the 1996 loophole to give risky and potentially deadly drugs to patients without their knowledge, especially people of color, many of whom were already justifiably distrustful of racial bias in medicine. Carte Blanche is an exposé of a U.S. medical-research system that has proven again and again that it cannot be trusted.

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