The Tuskegee files

Started reading this book for my medical ethics class about the Tuskegee experiments and three hours later I’m deep in a Wikipedia spiral about informed consent and medical research in the 1940s.

The Tuskegee files

What started as a basic homework assignment turned into me printing out like fifteen journal articles from the library database and highlighter-attacking everything in sight.

The crazy part is how much stuff I never learned in high school history. Like, they taught us about World War II and civil rights but somehow skipped over the part where the US government was literally experimenting on people without telling them? For forty years?

Three hours later…

Now I’m down this whole rabbit hole about medical ethics boards and how they came about because of cases like this.

Carmen walked in an hour ago, took one look at my desk situation, and just backed slowly out of the room. She knows better than to interrupt when I get like this. Although she did slide a Mountain Dew under the door which was pretty thoughtful.

Probably should’ve been studying for my anatomy quiz tomorrow but honestly this feels more important right now. Sometimes you stumble onto something that just makes you want to understand everything about how the world actually works, you know?