Of all wealthy countries, the United States is the most dangerous place to have a baby. Our maternal mortality rate is abysmal, and over the past five years it’s only gotten worse. And there are huge racial disparities: Black women are three times more likely to die than white women. Despite some claims to the contrary, the problem isn’t race, it’s racism. In this episode we trace the origins of this harrowing statistic back to the dawn of American gynecology—a field that was built on the bodies of enslaved women. And we’ll meet eight women who have dedicated their lives to understanding and solving this complex problem.

Credits

Host: Alexis Pedrick  Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Certain medical instruments have built-in methods of correcting for race. They’re based on the premise that Black bodies are inherently different from White bodies. The tool that measures kidney function, for example, underestimates how severe some Black patients’ kidney disease is, and prevents them from getting transplants. Medical students and doctors have been trying to do away with race correction tools once and for all. And they’re starting to see some success.

About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race

“Correcting Race” is Episode 9 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innateis made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.

Credits  |   Resource List   |   Transcript

Credits

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.  

Resource List

A Unifying Approach for GFR Estimation: Recommendations of the NKF-ASN Task Force on Reassessing the Inclusion of Race in Diagnosing Kidney Disease, by Cynthia Delgado, Mukta Baweja, Deidra C Crews, Nwamaka D Eneanya, Crystal A Gadegbeku, Lesley A Inker, Mallika L Mendu, W Greg Miller, Marva M Moxey-Mims, Glenda V Roberts, Wendy L St Peter, Curtis Warfield, Neil R Powe

A Yearslong Push to Remove Racist Bias From Kidney Testing Gains New Ground, by Theresa Gaffney  

c000-11ea-a71a-c7b116369e37.html">‘An entire system is changing’: UW Medicine stops using race-based equation to calculate kidney function, by Shannon Hong 

Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics, by Lundy Braun 

Expert Panel Recommends Against Use of Race in Assessment of Kidney Function, by Usha Lee McFarling 

Hidden in Plain Sight – Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms, by Darshali A. Vyas, Leo G. Eisenstein, and David S. Jones

bea0-11eb-883c-ab352c65fe56.html">Medical student advocates to end racism in medicine, by Anh Nguyen 

Precision in GFR Reporting Let’s Stop Playing the Race Card, by Vanessa Grubbs 

Reconsidering the Consequences of Using Race to Estimate Kidney Function, by Nwamaka Denise Eneanya,  Wei Yang, Peter Philip Reese

When the plague broke out in San Francisco in 1900 the public health department poured all of their energy into stopping its spread in Chinatown, as if Chinatown were the problem. This episode reveals why they did it, what it has to do with race science, and what it tells us about the history of public health.

Credits

Host: Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

In 2005 the FDA approved a pill to treat high blood preassure only in African Americans. This so-called miracle drug was named BiDil, and it became the first race-specific drug in the United States. It might sound like a good a good thing, but it had the unintended consequence of perpetuating the myth that race is a biological construct. 

Credits

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.  

Resource List

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century, by Dorothy Roberts

xpm-2007-may-17-oe-obasogie17-story.html">Oprah’s Unhealthy Mistake, by Osagie K. Obasogie

Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age, by Jonathan Kahn

Saving Sam: Drugs, Race, and Discovering the Secrets of Heart Disease, by Jay Cohn

The Slavery Hypertension Hypothesis: Dissemination and Appeal of a Modern Race Theory, by Jay S Kaufman, Susan A Hall

Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini

The word “Tuskegee” has come to symbolize the Black community’s mistrust of the medical establishment. It has become American lore. However, most people don’t know what actually happened in Macon County, Alabama, from 1932 to 1972. This episode unravels the myths of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Syphilis Study (the correct name of the study) through conversations with descendants and historians.

Credits

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Resource List

Black Journal; 301; The Tuskegee Study: A Human Experiment

Descendants of men from horrifying Tuskegee study want to calm virus vaccine fears, by David Montgomery 

Examining Tuskegee: The infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy 

Nova: The Deadly Deception 

Susceptible to Kindness: Miss Evers’ Boys and the Tuskegee Syphis Study 

Tuskegee Legacy Stories

1997-under-the-shadow-of-tuskegee.pdf"> Under the Shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and Health Care, by Vanessa Northington Gamble

Voices For Our Fathers Legacy Foundation

In 1991, as crews broke ground on a new federal office building in lower Manhattan, they discovered human skeletons. It soon became clear that it was the oldest and largest African cemetery in the country. The federal government was ready to keep building, but people from all over the African diaspora were moved to treat this site with dignity, respect, and scientific excellence. When bioarchaeologist Michael Blakey took over, that's exactly what they got. But it wasn't easy.

Credits

Host: Alexis Pedrick  Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.  

Resource List

Archaeology under the Blinding Light of Race, by Michael Blakey

internl-unesco-pub.pdf">African Burial Ground Project: Paradigm for Cooperation? by Michael Blakey

The African Burial Ground in New York City: Memory, Spirituality, and Space, by Andrea E. Frohne

The African Burial Ground: An American Discovery, documentary film by David Kutz

Reassessing the “Sankofa Symbol” in New York's African Burial Ground, by Erik R. Seeman

The New York African Burial Ground Final Reports, by multiple authors

In 2019, Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, a community organizer and journalist, learned that the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology had a collection of skulls that belonged to enslaved people. As Muhammad demanded that the university return these skulls, they discovered that claiming ownership over bodies of marginalized people is not just a relic of the past—it continues to this day.

Credits

Host: Alexis Pedrick  Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Resource List

collection-skulls-upenn-museum-repatriation-racial-justice-20210405.html"> It’s past time for Penn Museum to repatriate the Morton skull collection, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

museum-morton-skull-collection-burial-20220805.html"> Penn Museum seeks to rebury stolen skulls of Black Philadelphians and ignites pushback, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

museum-reparations-repatriation-move-bombing-20210421.html"> Penn Museum owes reparations for previously holding remains of a MOVE bombing victim, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

remains-penn-museum-city-officials-temple-archives-20210505.html"> City of Philadelphia should thoroughly investigate the MOVE remains’ broken chain of custody, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

Black Philadelphians in the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection , by Paul Wolff Mitchell

museum-morton-collection-black-philadelphians-skulls-20210216.html"> Some skulls in a Penn Museum collection may be the remains of enslaved people taken from a nearby burial ground, by Stephan Salisbury

Remains of children killed in MOVE bombing sat in a box at Penn Museum for decades, by Maya Kassutto

The fault in his seeds: Lost notes to the case of bias in Samuel George Morton's cranial race science, by Paul Wolff Mitchell

move-bombing-katricia-dotson.html"> She Was Killed by the Police. Why Were Her Bones in a Museum?, by Bronwen Dickey

Corpse Selling and Stealing were Once Integral to Medical Training, by Christopher D.E. Willoughby

Medicine, Racism, and the Legacies of the Morton Skull Collection, by Christopher D.E. Willoughby

investigation-report-20220609.pdf"> Final Report of the Independent Investigation into the City of Philadelphia’s Possession of Human Remains of Victims of the 1985 Bombing of the MOVE Organization, prepared by Dechert LLP and Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads LLP, for the city of Philadelphia

The Odyssey of the MOVE remains, prepared by the Tucker Law Group for the University of Pennsylvania

Move: Confrontation in Philadelphia, film by Jane Mancini and Karen Pomer

Let the Fire Burn, film by Jason Osder

Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (MOVE) Records, archival collection at Temple University's Urban Archives

In the 1990s a liberal population geneticist launched the Human Genome Diversity Project. The goal was to sequence the genomes of “isolated” and “disappearing” indigenous groups throughout the world. The project did not go as planned—indigenous groups protested it, and scientists and anthropologists criticized it. This episode examines what went wrong and asks the question: can anti-racist scientists create racist science? 

About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race

“The Vampire Project” is Episode 4 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.

Credits

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

In the 1970s Barry Mehler started tracking race scientists and he noticed something funny: they all had the same funding source. One wealthy man was using his incredible resources to prop up any scientist he could find who would validate his white supremacist ideology—and make it seem like it was backed by a legitimate scientific consensus.

About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race

“Keepers of the Flame” is Episode 3 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.

Credits

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.  

Resource List

‘The American Breed’: Nazi eugenics and the origins of the Pioneer Fund, by Paul Lombardo 

The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund, by William Tucker

The New Eugenics: Academic Racism in the U.S. Today, by Barry Mehler 

The Phil Donahue Show 

Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini

In 1793 a yellow fever epidemic almost destroyed Philadelphia. The young city was saved by two Black preachers, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, who organized the free Black community in providing essential services and nursing the sick and dying. Allen and Jones were assured of two things: that stepping up would help them gain full equality and citizenship, and that they were immune to the disease. Neither promise turned out to be true. 

About Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race

“Calamity in Philadelphia” is Episode 2 of Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race, a podcast and magazine project that explores the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine. Published through Distillations, the Science History Institute’s highly acclaimed digital content platform, the project examines the scientific origins of support for racist theories, practices, and policies. Innate is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.

Credits

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer Richard Allen voiceover by Jason Carr

“Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Resource List

How the Politics of Race Played Out During the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic, by Alicia Ault

A short account of the malignant fever, lately prevalent in Philadelphia: with a statement of the proceedings that took place on the subject in different parts of the United States, by Mathew Carey

Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840, by Rana A. Hogarth

A narrative of the proceedings of the black people, during the late awful calamity in Philadelphia, in the year 1793, by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen

Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers, by Richard Newman

Observations upon the origin of the malignant bilious, or yellow fever in Philadelphia, and upon the means of preventing it: addressed to the citizens of Philadelphia, by Benjamin Rush

Bishop Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom, produced by Dr. Mark Tyler

Transcript