New Medical Studies, Same Old Politics: The Effects of Anti-Black Racism on Penetrative Trauma Research

The effects of medical racism on health outcomes of Black people in the U.S. are well recorded in prominent medical journals and governmental study data. Despite this documentation, there has yet to be broad structural change addressing the multiple oppressive systems intersecting to create adverse outcomes for Black people. Consequently, trust in medicine and medical practitioners continues to be low, which impacts the relationship between Black people and dominant institutions of medicine, including medical research. In this paper, I analyze the ethics of a forthcoming study on penetrative wound treatment from Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. Using Franz Fanon’s analysis of medicine as a form of colonial practice and Dorothy Roberts’ analysis of the biological reduction of social inequities to problems of Black people themselves, I argue that the Philadelphia Immediate Transport in Penetrating Trauma Trial, or PIPT study 1) fails to meet the ethical requirement of treating study participants as human beings; 2) fails to engage with deep, structural inequities that produce higher rates of gun violence in communities from which study participants will be drawn; and 3) functions to reinforce stereotypes of Black men as violent and as thus to blame for the violence they face individually and at a community level. Without addressing the intersectional, structural, and interpersonal forms of oppression framing studies like the PIPT, I contend that medical researchers, medical practitioners, and policy makers cannot fully appreciate the extent to which race and anti-Black racism function to prevent the health and well-being of Black people.