January 19, 2021

Paw’d Defiance: Racism, Medicine and the COVID-19 Vaccine

This podcast from UW Tacoma features Edwin Lindo, Assistant Dean for Social & Health Justice at the UW School of Medicine. Below is a description and link to the episode.

Medicine has played a key role in the development of racist ideas, policies, and practices. Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus developed a system of organizing plants and animals known as taxonomy. Linnaeus and other scientists used taxonomy to disseminate racist ideas about those who weren’t white. In this episode, we talk about Linnaeus with University of Washington Assistant Dean Edwin Lindo. We also talk about other historical examples of medical racism and how these ideas still impact medicine and the larger society. Finally, we discuss how this history impacts the current effort to vaccinate members of Black and Brown communities against COVID-19.

More about UW Tacoma’s Paw’d Defiance here.