Carte Blanche

Harriet A. Washington is the author of Medical Apartheid, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Oakland Award, and the American Library Association Black Caucus Nonfiction Award. She has been a research fellow in medical ethics at Harvard Medical School, a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University, and the receipient of a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. She lectures in bioethics at Columbia University and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Her books also include A Terrible Thing to Waste and Infectious Madness.

“Urgent, alarming, riveting, and essential, Carte Blanche reveals that Americans, including African Americans, are still being medically experimented upon without their consent—yet again in research sanctioned by law. Harriet Washington’s powerful indictment of ongoing medical coercion unveils a gross violation of our human rights. It is vital reading at a moment when change is so necessary.” —Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist“Harriet Washington’s new book Carte Blanche, about unsanctioned medical experimentation on Americans, is the most unsettling and alarming work I’ve read in a long time. This issue is not a relic of history. It's a problem RIGHT NOW. This is required reading to understand the context of this pandemic.” —Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress“A tight and informative historical overview of the ways informed consent has been evaded.” —Washington Post“Medical ethicist and journalist Washington offers considerable evidence of deceptive and devious practices in medical research, which especially impact Black Americans.... An enlightening and well-supported examination of shocking malfeasance.” —Kirkus Reviews“I want to thank Harriet Washington for her wonderful book. As a physician, it was really engaging reading for so many reasons. It encompasses all the human conflicts and challenges we face when working in a fundamentally unjust system.” —Olajide A. Williams, MD, MS, Professor and Chief of Staff of the Department of Neurology at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons