Medical Stigmata, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2019 Race, Medicine, and the Pursuit of Theological Liberation

This book observes the idea of race as a false representation for the cause of disease. Race-based medicine, an emerging field in pharmacology, aims to create a specialty market based on racial groups. Within this market, the drug BiDil set a precedent in this area of medicine targeting African Americans as its first racial group. Consequently, selecting African Americans as a ?starter group? led to ethical questions regarding the motive behind race-based medicine within the context of the larger treatment of blacks in American medical history. This book therefore links medicine and American eugenics, examines race-based medicine?s influence on the perception of the black body, traces the influence of BiDil?s approval on the resurgence of race-based medicine, and assesses the black church?s response to race-based medicine using black liberation theology as a means to social justice.

Dr. Kirk A. Johnson teaches at Seton Hall University and Berkeley College in New Jersey, US. He is a member of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and The New York Academy of Medicine. He serves as a member of the Atlantic Health Systems Bioethics Committee and was formerly Assistant Director of the Medical Humanities program at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, US.