[PhilPhys] Jim Tabery - The Black Prisoners of Stateville: Race, Research, and Reckoning at the Dawn of Precision Medicine

[Center for Phil Sci]

The Center for Philosophy of Science invites you to join us for our Lunch
Time Talk.  Attend in person, Room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral
of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh or visit our live stream on
YouTube at *https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg>*.





*LTT:  **JimTabery*
Tuesday, October 22 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT

*Title: The Black Prisoners of Stateville: Race, Research, and Reckoning at
the Dawn of Precision Medicine*
Abstract: The modern science of precision medicine was born in a prison
outside Chicago 70 years ago. Clinical researchers with the US Army and the
University of Chicago used Black prisoners at the Stateville Penitentiary
to determine why some people had a dangerous reaction to antimalarial
drugs, part of the larger war effort to develop antimalarial drugs and
deploy them safely to US troops in Europe and the Pacific. The research, in
hindsight, was shocking—it was dangerous and harmful for prisoners
involved; family members of prisoners were recruited into the research;
identifiable information about prisoners was routinely displayed in
publications; even after the men were released, they were lured back to
give blood in exchange for money. The research, in hindsight, was also
enormously influential; the scientists ultimately identified the genetic
cause of the adverse drug reaction, providing the empirical foundation for
what would become pharmacogenetics and, later, precision medicine. The
research conducted at Stateville is among the most scrutinized episodes of
controversial science. It was hailed during World War II by American media;
it was featured by defense attorneys for Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials; it
was featured prominently when prison research was suspended in the US in
the 1970s; and it has generated a steady stream of scholarly reflection on
the tension between consent and coercion in prison research in the decades
since. Surprisingly, the standard view of this history is that it *only
involved white prisoners*. This presentation will reveal the unique role
played by Black prisoners, ask why their contribution has been erased from
the history, and consider appropriate ways to acknowledge a community of
people whose bodies and blood were used to give rise to precision medicine.

Can’t make it in-person? This talk will available online through the
following:
Zoom:  https://pitt.zoom.us/s/92628836786
YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.
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