Medical Ethic about Vaccine Testing on African Prostitutes in The Old Drift

Abstract

The Old Drift is a historical and fictional novel with magical realism to tell the decades-spanning story of African nations. It revealed kaleidoscopic variety of issues like family, generation, ethnical, national, and environmental problems through the description of several generations’ lives. This article will discuss the main issue of this novel: the problem of vaccine testing on African prostitutes. This essay explores Namwali Serpell’s novel The Old Drift through the lens of the interdisciplinary approach to provide the view on medical ethic and highlight the dehumanization of vaccine testing choosing African prostitutes as targets to fight against AIDS epidemic, which is full of ethnical and racial discrimination in this novel.