The movie then displays a chart claiming to use that same CDC data - obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request - to make a connection between vaccinating Black children and autism risk. For example, the film references a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism rates as evidence that African American children are being particularly harmed, but in reality the study did not conclude that African Americans are at increased risk of autism because of vaccination. There is lengthy discussion of the thoroughly disproven link between autism and vaccines. The film draws a line from the real and disturbing history of racism and atrocities in the medical field - such as the Tuskegee syphilis study - to interviews with anti-vaccine activists who warn communities of color to be suspicious of modern-day vaccines.Īt one point in Medical Racism, viewers are warned that "in black communities something is very sinister" and "the same thing that happened in the 1930s during the eugenics movement" is happening again. Kennedy.) With this film, Kennedy and his allies in the anti-vaccine movement resurface and promote disproven claims about the dangers of vaccines, but it's aimed squarely at a specific demographic: Black Americans. Attorney General Robert "Bobby" Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy Jr., the founder of Children's Health Defense. The free, online film is the latest effort by Robert F. I think that it is an advocacy piece for anti-vaxxers," Rogers says. "I was naive, certainly, in assuming that this was actually a documentary, which I would say it is not. When she clicked on the link and began watching the 57-minute film, she was shocked to discover this was the movie she had sat down for back in October. She received an email from a group called Children's Health Defense - prominent in the anti-vaccine movement - promoting its new film, Medical Racism: The New Apartheid. It wasn't until this March that Rogers would stumble upon the answer. "I thought it's so odd that they wouldn't tell me who these people were." "They said, 'Well, there's 'a guy' in New York, and we talked to 'somebody in New Jersey, and California,' " Rogers told NPR. The producer's response struck Rogers as curiously vague. During a short break, she asked who else was being interviewed for the film. At the time, there were few indications that anything was out of the ordinary - except one. "We were talking about issues of racism and experimentation, and they seemed to be handled appropriately," Rogers recalls. James Marion Sims, who was influential in the field of gynecology but who performed experimental surgery on enslaved Black women during the 1800s without anesthesia. She discussed her research and in particular controversial figures such as Dr. Then they spent about an hour interviewing Rogers. Before the interview, crew members cleaned the room thoroughly. The director wanted something more polished than a Zoom call, so a well-outfitted camera crew arrived at Rogers' home in Connecticut in the fall. The subject of vaccines was also mentioned, but the focus wasn't clear to Rogers. She assumed her comments would end up in a straightforward documentary that addressed some of the most pressing concerns of the pandemic, such as the legacy of racism in medicine and how that plays into current mistrust in some communities of color. She had done these "talking head" interviews many times before. When a filmmaker asked medical historian Naomi Rogers to appear in a new documentary, the Yale professor didn't blink. Kennedy Jr., resurfaces disproven claims about the dangers of vaccines and targets its messages at Black Americans who may have ongoing concerns about racism in medical care. A movie released online by Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group headed by Robert F.
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