Books by Harriet A. Washington

Most Americans think their right to give or withhold medical consent is protected by law. However, Harriet Washington, an acclaimed science writer and ethicist, shows that medical studies are often carried on without the patients' consent, particularly among African American communities and other ethnic groups. This is an especially urgent concern as the world races to find treatments and vaccines for Covid-19.

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.

From the award-winning author of Medical Apartheid, an exposé of the rush to own and exploit the raw materials of life—including yours. Think your body is your own to control and dispose of as you wish? Think again. The United States Patent Office has granted at least 40,000 patents on genes controlling the most basic processes of human life, and more are pending. If you undergo surgery in many hospitals you must sign away ownership rights to your excised tissues, even if they turn out to have medical and fiscal value. Life itself is rapidly becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the medical-industrial complex. Deadly Monopolies is a powerful, disturbing, and deeply researched book that illuminates this “life patent” gold rush and its harmful, and even lethal, consequences for public health. Like the bestselling The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, it reveals in shocking detail just how far the profit motive has encroached in colonizing human life and compromising medical ethics.