In the heart of the world's wealthiest nation, one hundred thousand people were poisoned by the water supply for two years- with the knowing complicity of their government. Written by the pediatrician who helped turn the crisis into a movement for change.
In 2015, during the very week a pediatrician-turned-researcher exposed the high likelihood that lead-laced water was poisoning the child population of Flint, Mich, two officials of the Environmental Protection Agency engaged in an email exchange that, in retrospect, serves as an encapsulation of that city’s water crisis. Wrote one to the other: 'I’m not so sure Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for.' Came the too-succinct reply: 'I concur.' ... The mindset among the many layers of bureaucrats who failed to protect Flint is the dragon in Mona Hanna-Attisha’s account of the crisis, What the Eyes Don’t See. And she, in the story she tells, is the dragon-slayer, that same pediatrician-turned-researcher whose weapons against a failed system were persistence, data and her own outrage ... As such, this book is not a journalistic account of Flint’s water crisis, but the memoir of an activist.
In the heart of the world's wealthiest nation, 100,000 people were poisoned by the water supply for two years --- with the knowing complicity of their government. Written by the crusading pediatrician who helped turn the crisis into a transformative movement for change, What your Eyes Don't See is a devastating insider chronicle of the Flint water crisis, the signature environmental disaster of our time, and a riveting narrative of personal advocacy.
What the Eyes Don't See is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona--accompanied by an idiosyncratic team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders--proved that Flint's kids were exposed to lead and then fought her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world ... Paced like a scientific thriller, this book shows how misguided austerity policies, the withdrawal of democratic government, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself--an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family's activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice.
