Speaker 1: On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with something personal. On May fifth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, I lost my mom. She was complaining about
Speaker 1: her stomach hurtain, so we took her to the er.
Speaker 1: Hours later, she was still in pain and they finally
Speaker 1: moved her upstairs to the ICU. Forty five minutes later,
Speaker 1: she was on a breathing two. Her organs were shutting
Speaker 1: down because of sepsis, and just like that, she was gone.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I didn't know. I didn't know. Maybe you didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. Well, let me tell y'all, losing your mom
Speaker 1: is hard enough, but when you're black, you have this
Speaker 1: extra layer of PTSD. Why because you know, Black women
Speaker 1: are often dismissed in the medical field. They're overlooked, ignored.
Speaker 1: And it's not just a feeling, it's facts. There's a
Speaker 1: book Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington, and it lays out
Speaker 1: the long dark history of how black folks, especially black women,
Speaker 1: have been used, abused, and experimented on in the name
Speaker 1: of science. From slavery to right now, let me break
Speaker 1: it down for you. Did you know there's still this
Speaker 1: misconception that black women have a higher threshold for pain.
Speaker 1: And I know Mama made miracles every Thanksgiving, every Christmas
Speaker 1: and every birthday, but their white doctors were thinking black
Speaker 1: women were superheroes for real, or she's black, she can
Speaker 1: take it. What And if you want to know how
Speaker 1: deep this rabbit hole goes, let's talk about Henrietta Lax.
Speaker 1: Since went to the doctor in nineteen fifty one for
Speaker 1: cervical cancer and without her knowledge, they took her sales
Speaker 1: then named them healer seals h e LA And those
Speaker 1: sales turned out to be immortal, like they could survive
Speaker 1: and multiply in labs which had never been done before.
Speaker 1: They helped develop vaccines, cancer treatments IVF. Heeler sales have
Speaker 1: saved millions of lives. But here's the part that'll make
Speaker 1: your blood boil. Henrietta Lax never gave consents and her
Speaker 1: family never saw a dime. Pharmaceutical companies made billions off
Speaker 1: those seals while her kids and grandkids were struggling to
Speaker 1: pay for health care. It made a bunch of dollars,
Speaker 1: but a damn sure don't make no sense. So when
Speaker 1: we talk about black folks in the medical field, we're
Speaker 1: not just talking about distrust. We're talking about a system,
Speaker 1: a system that has dismissed us, stolen from us, and
Speaker 1: experimented on us without shame. And for me, every time
Speaker 1: I think about my mom's last hours, it's hard not
Speaker 1: to wonder if she wasn't black. Wol They have taken
Speaker 1: her pain a little more seriously, but they have moved faster.
Speaker 1: These questions hunt me, and I know I'm not alone.
Speaker 1: That's why it's so important for us to know our
Speaker 1: history and advocate for ourselves, because if we don't speak up,
Speaker 1: who will. Medical Apartheid a book by Harriet Washington. It
Speaker 1: was something that I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either,