Harvard Law Petrie-Flom Center, Bill of Health, Examining the Intersections of Health Law, BioTechnology, and BioEthics, (Oct. 8, 2020).
Medical neocolonialism as a concept aptly characterizes the pattern of extraction of resources from Black and other people of color for experimental clinical trials. Medical neocolonialism is tied to the presumed expendability of Black life. This presumed expendability is witnessed both domestically and internationally, from unethical medical experimentation, to the devastating racially disproportionate impact of COVID-19, to the inadequate domestic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the seemingly unrelenting onslaught of police violence against Black people in the United States. Even where legal and regulatory frameworks exist on paper for study participants, the de facto policy of treating Black, Indigenous, and other people of color as expendable requires more robust mechanisms to counteract the praxis of dehumanization.