All throughout slavery, enslaved Black people were subjected to countless cruel and inhuman medical studies and experiments. Perhaps one of the most famous examples came from J. Marion Sims who some still hail as the “father of modern gynecology,” according to Live Science. Sims conducted multiple experiments on enslaved women in order to treat vesico-vaginal fistula, a condition that caused a great deal of pain. Sims performed surgeries on the women without using any anesthesia because he believed the operations weren’t “painful enough to justify the trouble,” he said during a lecture in 1857.
This election season, the stakes are higher than usual — and so is the pressure on newsrooms to soften their coverage, stay quiet, or just disappear. Independent reporting, the kind that answers to readers instead of advertisers or political pressure, matters more in a moment like this, not less.
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