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    The Sun InterviewBy Naomi PittsStandards of CareRolonda Donelson on Bias and Anti-Science Attitudes in Medicine

    The reason Black women were used to develop the field of gynecology was because they were no more than property. They weren’t seen as people; they were just seen as things. The controlling of Black women’s bodies started with chattel slavery, but it continues today.

    Milk
    Readers WriteBy Our ReadersMilk

    Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

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Floyd Skloot

Floyd Skloot, of Amity, Oregon, is the author of the novel Pilgrim’s Harbor and a collection of poems called Music Appreciation.

Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

Thorns Into Feathers

Coping With Chronic Illness

When I heard the first melancholy notes of the cello in Schumann’s A Minor Concerto, my world changed. I knew the music of illness when I heard it.

June 1994
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

Double Blind

When Healing Is A Gamble

I’ve been a medical research subject for two years now. A human guinea pig. There never really was a choice. I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), an illness for which there is no cure or treatment, an illness so misunderstood and misnamed that it has been virtually ignored by most medical practitioners and researchers. Calling this Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is like calling Parkinson’s disease Chronic Shaking Syndrome: the name addresses the symptom not the cause of the disease.

November 1993
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

An Unbelievable Illness

There’s a lot wrong with me. Researchers in Maryland have cultivated several viruses from my blood and spinal fluid, revealing that those viruses are rampant in my body. My body’s immune system flails away at them without success.

September 1992
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