What the Eyes Don’t See is an eyeopening look at the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Flint, Michigan written by the pediatrician who brought the health crisis to national prominence by holding a press conference to discuss the correlation between the blood lead levels in children following the change to Flint River as the water source for the city.
“Where is the American Dream in the Flint scenario? It’s not there. It’s not even talked about. It is becoming so out of reach. At the end of their lives, most children wind up where they started.”
In 2014, in a cost saving effort, the water source for Flint, Michigan was changed from Lake Huron to Flint River. At a barbecue in the summer of 2015 one of Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha’s friends, who used to work for the EPA, mentioned that there was reason to believe the water in Flint was contaminated with lead. As a leading pediatrician for a public hospital Dr. Mona had access to hundreds of medical records, including the mandatory blood lead levels of children on Medicaid. Despite her requests for help in her research from the state of Michigan going unanswered she was able to put together a comprehensive, and appalling, report on the toxic levels of lead poisoning the children of Flint in a few weeks. Before revealing her results to the public Dr. Mona presented her findings to numerous state officials who ignored her findings and after her press conference they accused her of “splicing and dicing” her report to cause mass hysteria in the people of Flint. Eventually the city and state recanted, issued a state of emergency and switched the water source back to the lake but the damage was done and until the underground network of pipes is replaced the water in Flint continues to be unsafe.
“The world shouldn’t be comprised of people in boxes. Minding their own business. It should be full of people raising their voices, using their power and presence, standing up for what’s right. Minding one another’s business. That’s the world I live in. And that’s the world I want to live in.”
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha writes a thought provoking, engaging expose while weaving her own personal narrative as an Iraqi immigrant whose family witnessed numerous crimes against humanity. At times Dr. Mona’s personal anecdotes felt a bit shoehorned into the narrative but overall they added an additional layer of humanity to the story. This book will make you angry. I consider myself a fairly well informed American but Dr Mona’s in-depth, first hand account of the Flint Water Crisis gave me hundreds of facts I had not come across on my own. Hanna-Attisha is a talented and natural writer whose story reads more like a true crime thriller than a medical text. It should come to no surprise that this book, and the story of Flint, are being optioned for film and television.