Mad In America: Science, Psychiatry And Social Justice

Dr. Anthony Ryan Hatch is a sociologist and associate professor of Science in Society, African American studies and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University, who studies how medicine and technology impact social inequality and health. Professor Hatch is the author of two books. His first book, Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America, critiques how biomedical scientists, government researchers, and drug companies use the concepts of race and ethnicity to study and treat ‘metabolic syndrome,’ a biomedical construct that identifies people at high risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. His second book, Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America, examines how custodial institutions like prisons, nursing homes, and the U.S. military use psychotropic drugs to manage mass incarceration and captivity in the United States. His 2018 Wesleyan TedX talk is entitled “How Social Institutions Get Hooked on Drugs.”