Welcome to Difficult Conversations with Dr. Anthony Orsini.  Today, I am are honored to have another amazing guest.  Our guest today is Dorothy Roberts, who is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School where she holds the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. She’s also the founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science, & Society. Dorothy is the author of several award-winning books including, Killing the Black Body, Shattered Bonds, Fatal Invention, and Torn Apart, coming out soon. Recent recognitions of her work include 2019 Honorary Doctor of Laws degrees at Rutgers University, 2017 election to the National Academy of Medicine, 2016 Society of Family Planning Lifetime Achievement Award. Her TED talk on, “The problem with race-based medicine.” has had over 1 million views. 

Dr Roberts tells us about her background, growing up in Chicago and how she pursued her interest in social justice.  We learn what race-based medicine is and why it is such a big problem. Dorothy shares a story about a clinical trial she participated in and why it seemed so unscientific to use race as a variable. We find out who Dr. Samuel Cartwright was,  and why he is so important to understanding the role that racial medicine has played over time  in America.  Dorothy discusses the impact that diagnostic tools being used in medicine today that use  automatic race correction have  for black patients based on false assumptions.   We learn why it is so important when speaking to medical students and physicians to ask why they are using race when they should be looking at genetics.  We discuss her  book, Fatal Invention, that is used by incoming medical students across the country, as well as her new book coming out in April, Torn Apart, which is about racism in the child welfare system.  

Host:

Dr. Anthony Orsini

Guest:

Dorothy Roberts

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It’s All In The Delivery: Improving Healthcare Starting With A Single Conversation by Dr. Anthony Orsini

Resources 

Dorothy Roberts Twitter

[email protected]

TED Talk 2015- Dorothy Roberts: The problem with race-based medicine

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create race in the Twenty-first Century by Dorothy Roberts

Torn Apart:  How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World by Dorothy Roberts