I just read that link. That’s awful - I’d always assumed Lacks volunteered her cells.
nope! I blogged about this a while back, here’s my longer thoughts on Henrietta lacks
I read this book this past semester, it’s an important story to be told about race, class, gender and science in our country.
From it’s Amazon page:
From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive—even thrive—in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution—and her cells’ strange survival—left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? —Tom Nissley
Just to elaborate on the story
The most aggravating part of this story is that somehow people, when given all these facts, still believe that race & class had nothing to do with how Lacks was treated. That we can’t be mad at the scientists. That medicine and testing is more important that human dignity. All i want to know is why did history try so hard to hide the fact that the cells that lead to a scientific breakthrough belong to a black woman. So many other people are glorified in history for their role in revolutionizing medicine. But nothing is said when one of the most important mothers of modern medicine happens to also be black…
no one likes asking the hard questions because we don’t like being honest about the answers…
If i haven’t spoiled the book for you already, go out and read it!
Asked by wiitns
Its funny, because science has been used in America to hold a lot of groups down. Or lets look at what happened concerning Henrietta Lacks, who unknowingly revolutionized science.
But I don’t know if that was the answer you were looking for, but for some reason all I can think about are the ways science stands as a barrier for equality, or all the times physiologists use scientific findings on differences between men and women to come up with sociological conclusions.
But there is also this really interesting article explaining feminist science! which can better explain the ways in which biases within science can be exposed, in order to reach greater truths and more inclusive and less discriminatory findings
I just saw this on CNN. This is what happened when scientists governed by ignorance use their degrees to manipulate parents and americans into blindly following hegemonic and dangerous cultural norms.
from the AC360 blog:
Kirk Murphy was a bright 5-year-old boy, growing up near Los Angeles in the 1970s. He was the middle child, with big brother Mark, 8, and little sister Maris, just a baby at 9 months. Their mother, Kaytee Murphy, remembers Kirk’s kind nature, “He was just very intelligent, and a sweet, sweet, child.” But she was also worried.
“Well, I was becoming a little concerned, I guess, when he was playing with dolls and stuff,” she said. “Playing with the girls’ toys, and probably picking up little effeminate, well, like stroking the hair, the long hair and stuff. It just bothered me that maybe he was picking up maybe too many feminine traits.” She said it bothered her because she wanted Kirk to grow up and have “a normal life.”
Then Kaytee Murphy saw a psychologist on local television.
“He was naming all of these things; ‘If your son is doing five of these 10 things, does he prefer to play with girls’ toys instead of boys’ toys?’ Just things like this,” she said.
The doctor was on TV that day, recruiting boys for a government-funded program at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Well, him being the expert, I thought, maybe I should take Kirk in,” said Kaytee Murphy. “In other words, nip it in the bud, before it got started any further.”
I read this book this past semester, it’s an important story to be told about race, class, gender and science in our country.
From it’s Amazon page:
From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive—even thrive—in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution—and her cells’ strange survival—left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? —Tom Nissley
Just to elaborate on the story
The most aggravating part of this story is that somehow people, when given all these facts, still believe that race & class had nothing to do with how Lacks was treated. That we can’t be mad at the scientists. That medicine and testing is more important that human dignity. All i want to know is why did history try so hard to hide the fact that the cells that lead to a scientific breakthrough belong to a black woman. So many other people are glorified in history for their role in revolutionizing medicine. But nothing is said when one of the most important mothers of modern medicine happens to also be black…
no one likes asking the hard questions because we don’t like being honest about the answers…
If i haven’t spoiled the book for you already, go out and read it!
