Sterilization Of Puerto Rican Women

Puertorican Pistol: Human Experimentation in Puerto Rico

It was in my research of my fellow Puerto Rican, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, that I came upon information regarding medical experimentation illegally performed on Puerto Ricans.  I had heard before of the Puerto Rican Pill Trials (a human trial study of contraception pills done on Puerto Rican women); but forced sterilizations, injecting live cancer cells in unwitting patients and exposing prisoners to radiation, exceeded my previous knowledge of the situation. In 1932, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos wrote a manuscript in which he accused Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads of killing Puerto Rican patients as part of the medical experiments conducted in San Juan's Presbyterian Hospital for the Rockefeller Institute.  His proof was a third party letter in which Dr. Rhoads admits to injecting live cancer cells in patients.  The letter also included inflammatory racists comments denigrating Puerto Ricans for their alleged bad character. Investigations at the time did not publicly reveal evidence of malicious activity to support the claim and Dr. Rhoads was vindicated while Albizu Campos was discredited.   Wikipedia Years later, in 2003, after an independent investigation led by the eminent bio ethicist Dr. Jay Katz, of Yale University, the American Association for Cancer Research removed Dr. Rhoad's name from their annual award intended for an "individual on the basis of meritorious achievement in cancer research."  Although, no formal apology was exercised, none was truly required.  I personally applaud the AACR. In the 1950s, an oral contraceptive was being developed in Boston, MA.  The preliminary Boston Trials had given the team of John Rock and Gregory Pincus the confidence they needed to pursue a more lucrative endeavor in the marketing of such a product.  But without large scale human trials, Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval would never be given and marketability would be nil. Another aspect that he found appealing was that if Pincus could show that the poor, uneducated women of Puerto Rico could follow the Pill regimen, then women anywhere in the world could too.  Pincus hoped to quiet critics' concerns that "oral" contraceptives would be too "complicated" for women in developing nations and American inner cities to use. The pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle provided the pills for the trial.

Cities of the United States, studies in urban anthropology

Puerto Rico, a people challenging colonialism, a people's primer

Women of color and the reproductive rights movement

Matters of choice, Puerto Rican women's struggle for reproductive freedom

Forsaken females, the global brutalization of women