During the 1950’s African American’s had a difficult time living in a world where they were seen to be lesser of a human being than what they were. They were treated differently in normal everyday lives as well as in the medical world. Henrietta Lacks was a woman who was greatly affected by this divide between whites and African-Americans. Because of the color of her skin, I believe she was not treated to the best of the doctor’s ability, and instead just used for indirect experimentation. In Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, she gives examples of how African-Americans were treated differently, a few of those include; the conditions of John Hopkins, the African-American medical experiments, and Hector Henry.
Although she relocated in her twenties to the north she still experienced racial disparity specifically through her medical experience. John Hopkins was a hospital with a unique mission, in retrospect to the time in which it was founded, this mission is simply put by a scholarly article on the subject, “to provide care to the sick and indigent ‘without regard to sex, age, or color’”. With the socio economic status and race of Henrietta this hospital was one of the least segregated and most willing to provide car for Henrietta and people like her. Despite this seemingly positive improvement in her story, what went on in the hospital and specifically what took place with the story of Henrietta lacks was not right or ethical. Henrietta and many others were in fact segregated into color wards, although the segregation took place she received the standard care of that time.
Not long after Henrietta’s round of radiation, she complained to her doctors, “that she thought the cancer was spreading, that she could feel in moving through her” and the doctors ignored her complaints (63). They told her nothing was wrong and sent her on her way. According to Skloot, that was common practice, especially during the segregation era. Patients did not question doctors because it was assumed doctors knew better and “black people didn’t question white people’s professional judgement” (63). It wasn’t until Henrietta’s forth visit in just a few weeks that they listened to her and took an X-ray of her abdomen that they found a large, inoperable
Black patients were usually denied access to medical care, and many doctors thought that black patients were inferior to whites. Henrietta was treated at Johns Hopkins for her cervical cancer where she recieved below-average medical care due to her race. Though the hospital was one of the few that even allowed African American patients, it was known for conducting unethical experiments on their patients. Henrietta’s medical records would later reveal her doctors never told her the true severerity of her cancer, and also the fact that they were taking her cells for research purposes. In the words of Rebecca Skloot, “Henrietta knew nothing about her cells growing in a laboratory.
So she knew she could avoid the doctor know longer, so her husband drove her to the only major hospital that served African-Americans. The hospital was known as John Hopkins and it was in East Baltimore. At the hospital, she had gone to see a gynecologist named Howard Jones, who studied her long list of untreated diseases. She had many untreated medical conditions, but they were never treated with proper medical treatment. During the time at the hospital, she stated that “walking into Hopkins was like entering a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language.”
Henrietta’s story should be viewed as one that has helped countless people around the world, not one of race and
When Henrietta went to John Hopkins Hospital she soon found out that she had Cervical Cancer. While she was under anesthetics they took some cells without her knowledge and gave them to a lab. If she had been a white women I feel as if they would have asked her for a sample of her cells and respected her decision whether it be yes or no. The hospital continued to do things that she did not know of.
Since Henrietta lived in a time when discrimination was not uncommon, the reaction of the public today would differ greatly from if the book had been published in the 1950s. For example, on the treatment of African Americans, Skloot states, “they recruited hundreds of African-American men with syphilis, then watched them die slow, painful, and preventable deaths, even after they realized penicillin could cure them”. Clearly, this quote demonstrates the racial discrimination present during the time of Henrietta because African Americans were often treated as test subjects, instead of as human beings. In addition, doctors were considered to be trustworthy individuals because of their high degree of education. Even if African Americans were aware of their unfair treatment, they accepted racial segregation as common practice and were grateful to be receiving any form of treatment.
Racism in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Imagine your mother, sister, wife, or cousin was diagnosed with cervical cancer and you believed the doctors were doing everything in their power to help her. Only later you discovered her cells were used for research without consent and she was not properly informed of the risks of her treatment due to her race. This story happened and is told by Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Skloot use of narrative and her writing style enhances the understanding of the story. Henrietta Lacks was a young black woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at John Hopkins Hospital.
Deborah states, "Truth be told, I can 't get mad at science because it help people live, and I 'd be a mess without it. I 'm a walking drugstore! I can 't say nuthin bad about science, but I won 't lie, I would like some health insurance so I don 't got to pay all that money every month for drugs my mother cells probably helped make". This explains how Deborah has to spend all her money on not even all her medication because she can 't even afford health insurance that will cover her medicine. African Americans who were
She was a poor, uneducated, colored female living in the 1950’s. Many medical professionals and scientists of the time believed that colored people were privileged to be receiving treatment; therefore, they should be allowed to extract, inject, and experiment on colored people in the name of science. The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment is a prime example of this sentiment. Additionally, many doctors did not believe it was important to justify themselves, because their poor, uneducated patients would not understand regardless. This sense of inferiority led to a lack of explanations from doctors and a lack of questions from patients.
In Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation by Edwidge Danticat tells the story of Saya, whose mother is being held in an immigration detention center. Saya’s mother is an undocumented immigrant originally from Haiti who was arrested by immigration police, leaving Saya alone with her father. Saya and her father visit the detention center every week, but do not know when her mother will return home. Saya finds comfort in listening to her mother’s voice and every week she receives a cassette tape which contain her mother telling bedtime stories. Saya is inspired by her mother’s storytelling and decides to write her own story.
She seems credible because she has a glimpse into the disease through personal experience. Fisher also uses the presence of political leaders to backup her claim: “No less compassionate than that of the president and Mrs. Bush.” Here, Fisher demonstrates the powerful support that she receives. By saying that the president shares the same views, more people will be compelled to listen, because of the major leader who also believes in the
The tem ethics refers to the moral principles that guide a person’s behavior, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of their actions. In the field of nursing, these moral principles govern the relationship between the nurse and the patient, members of the healthcare team, and society at large. Nurses must constantly question whether a certain procedure or course of treatment is in the best interest of the patient. When viewing the film “Miss Evers’ Boys”, it was clear that the doctors, researchers, and even Miss Evers were not acting in the best interest of all the patients. This movie depicted true events of a study that took place in Macon County, Alabama, in 1932.
11/23/2015 Florence Nightingale 1. Analyze the Applicability of the Theory a. Structure • This theory is based upon the concept of environment and 13 sub-concepts, which can be manipulated to prevent diseases. • The metaparadigms are well defined; however, the 13 canons/sub-concepts are not described that well. Hence lacking structure and clarity.
