In 2018, New York City removed a statue of medical icon James Marion Sims, which had stood in Central Park (just across the street from the New York Academy of Medicine) since 1934. The statue bore a plaque praising Sims' "brilliant achievements" in medicine; Sims, who died in 1883, was posthumously called the "father of gynecology." He is most famous for improving the technique to repair obstetric fistulas, which are abnormal openings between a woman's genital tract, urinary tract or rectum that cause urinary incontinence. While rare today in developed countries, an obstetric vesicovaginal fistula was a major complication of childbirth among 19th century women in America.
"You don't have to ask these people whether you can experiment on them. You simply go to the owners, and it's a business deal. That was the nature of the economic relationship between medicine and slavery."
