Books at the Intersection of Race, Bioethics, and Health

Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison by Allen Hornblum, 1998

African American Bioethics: Culture, Race, and Identity, edited by Lawrence J. Prograis Jr. and Edmund D. Pellegrino, 2007

Application of Systems Thinking to Health Policy & Public Health Ethics: Public Health and Private Illness, by Michele Battle-Fisher, 2015

The Assisted Reproduction of Race by Camisha A. Russell, 2018

Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by James H. Jones, 1981, 1993

Bioethics Research Concerns & Directions For African Americans edited by Marian Gray Secundy, Annette Dula, and September Williams, paperback, 2000

Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People's Health by Keisha Ray, 2023

Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind by Osagie Obasogie, 2013

Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination by Alondra Nelson, 2012

Embodied Injustice: Race, Disability, and Health by Mary Crossley, 2022. 

Disrupting Queer Inclusion: Canadian Homonationalisms and the Politics of Belonging edited by OmiSoore H. Dryden and Suzanne Lenon, 2015

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts, 2011; related WBEZ interview

Genealogy of a Gene: Patients, HIV/AIDS, and Race by Myles W. Jackson, 2015

Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History edited by Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, and Catherine Lee, 2012

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, 2010

It Just Ain't Fair: The Ethics of Health Care for African Americans edited by Annette Dula and Sara Goering, 1984

Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care by Dayna Bowen Matthew, 2015; the National Association of School Psychologists Social Justice Committee developed this guidance document to offer a structured way to engage in discussions about this book that it recommended as its “National Book Read” for the 2020–2021 school year

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, by Dorothy Roberts, 1997; hear the Henry L. Gates Jr., Lecture, “Killing the Black Body: A Twenty-Year Retrospective,” delivered by Dr. Roberts on April 27, 2017, at Yale University

Making a Place for Ourselves: The Black Hospital Movement, 1920-1945, by Vanessa Northington Gamble, 1995

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington, 2006; related Democracy Now interview and NPR interview

Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and The Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens, 2017

The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice & Knowledge after the Genome by Jenny Reardon, 2017; related Talks at GS interview

Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics by Karla FC Holloway, 2011

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan M. Metzel, 2010

Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin, 2019

Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics by Jenny Reardon, 2009

Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth by Dána-Ain Davis, 2019 — This is the “One Book, One Community” book choice by the School of Public Health for Spring 2021. More information about joining the discussion is here.

Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age edited by Barbara A. Koenig, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, and Sarah S. Richardson, 2008

The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome by Alondra Nelson, 2016

A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet A. Washington, 2019; related NPR interview