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Harriet Washington Marble Wonders Summary

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Profitable Wonders is a well-written article by Harriet Washington that depicts and analyzes one the foundations of western medicine. The main point of this article was to shed light on the inhumane experiments by white doctors and slave owners on their slaves and how to show ethically wrong this practice was. The author introduced her thesis by telling the story of John Brown and the doctor who experimented on him. From this, she opened her discussion by providing more gruesome stories of experimentation on black slaves and the integrated racism in the start of western medicine. To get her point across, Harriet Washington used memoirs and books by the people who experienced the experiments in any way to get her point across. She includes …show more content…

Sims has been praised as the “father of American gynecology”, many not knowing the ways he got that title. In the late 19th century, many women were having infections, and the way Sims went around trying to solve the problem was by using enslaved black women as his source to find a cure. He found the results he wanted to find, but at the expense of African women’s humanity. First of all, this is obvious epistemic violence. Looking at the entire message of the article, one of the main sayings was that white doctors considered African slaves to not have the same sense of pain white people do, fundamentally denying their humanity. Looking at the James Brown case, he withstood a massive amount of torture until he cracked and escaped. His doctor obviously did not consider Brown a human and wanted to hurt him for profit. Correspondingly, if one were to look at the differences between African patients and white patients, the difference is immense. Whites were treated how every patient gets treated in the modern day. They were legally bound to safe procedures and had a right to exit the experiment if they desired. African slaves, knowing they were not American citizens were not legally bound to anything and were treated like animals. Many times, white doctors experimented on African slaves, not for health reasons, but for fame and profit. These experiments lead to many

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171 Words | 1 Pages

In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, the author demonstrates the harsh realities that many African Americans faced in the medical and scientific field during the mid 20th century. The author shows the unjust practices of this time period through interviews with the Lacks family and medical professionals. These harsh realities are proven when Skloot talks to Henrietta’s family. Henrietta’s husband, Day, explains how they took samples from Henrietta’s body without consent when Skloot writes, “Day clenched his remaining three teeth. "I didn't sign no papers," he said.

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726 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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1397 Words | 6 Pages

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.

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853 Words | 4 Pages

Multiple times throughout the book it was mentioned that Henrietta’s biopsy took place 60 years ago and a lot of changes have been made to science and ethics. This book did a good job bringing up ethics in science and scientific achievements that have been made over the years, but in some ways it was sensationalized to get the family the recognition they feel they deserved. As a poor, black family, the Lacks’ were discriminated against. Even the medical treatments they received were often not the best treatments offered and they were often experimented on. Having the fear of being mistreated and used for experimentation made the Lacks’ even more upset about Henrietta’s death.

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1514 Words | 7 Pages

When doing research like the author of this book did, it is easy to get caught up in all of the information and forget it is from 70 years ago. What Henrietta’s doctors did to her is unthinkable now, but it didn’t happen in 2023, it happened in 1951, and back then the laws and acceptable practices were different. That does not excuse behavior, but it is still important to keep in mind. V. Further reading/ Additional Information 1.

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638 Words | 3 Pages

Removing Henrietta’s cells without her consent seems to be a very rare scenario and this can tell how the medical community mistreats the Black Americans. A woman of black America origin, Rebecca Skloot managed to surface other different stories of maltreatment directed to the African American community. Blacks in America were taken as people with unequal rights even in a situation like this that talked about right to life. She explained horrific experiences on experimentation of African Americans, stories that were enhanced by fear seen in Henrietta’s relatives refusing to visit hospitals even for necessary treatment. In this regard, the paper will give a response to the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks.

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774 Words | 4 Pages

Statistically, African American women in the United States suffer from complications or death 243 percent more than white women during maternity. This is a common occurrence that many women and children face, but shouldn’t have too. Rebecca Skloots book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is an example of the inequality shown to African-American women in the medical world. Specifically, the unequal medical care Henrietta Lacks received, which many other black women experienced. In her book, Skloot suggests that African-American women suffer from psychological effects after receiving unequal medical care, do not receive equal medical treatment during maternity, and are more likely to die from maternal complications.

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965 Words | 4 Pages

Peter Strople once said, “Legacy is not something one leaves to people, it's something one leaves in people.” Henrietta Lacks’ legacy is her cells and how they helped hundreds of people. Henrieta Lacks is an African American woman who died from cervical cancer and her cancerous cells were taken from her without her consent. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot expresses the central issues of ethics and race through various literary devices. Henrietta’s story highlights the systemic racism and exploitation that has occurred in the medical field.

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490 Words | 2 Pages

The work of J. Marion Sims contributed to the spread of this mistrust as he violated numerous black women in his pursuit to learn more about female anatomy. Today, mistrust in the black community can be seen in the way they have little trust in medical healers and their services. A frequent reason for this mistrust is the fear that medical healers will prioritize the care of white patients and minimize the symptoms of black patients. This fear is legitimized when considering the acts of J. Marion Sims and how he spread misinformation about black people's anatomy and minimized black women's symptoms and

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938 Words | 4 Pages

Henrietta even admitted, “she, like most black patients, only went to Hopkins when she thought she had no choice,” (Skloot: 16). Henrietta felt forced to go to this certain hospital, where she was met with doctors who had no intention of explaining to her what exactly was happening to her body. Not only was she disrespected because of her financial state, her family was too. Even though their mother is the reason for the world’s largest medical revolution, strangers were given the profits that came off of Henrietta’s cells. Yet Henrietta’s children suffered so significantly, they could not even afford health insurance; for the family of the woman who created a whole new look on the medical field to

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480 Words | 2 Pages

”(Bristol) Using African slaves to work the plantations is a necessity for the colony’s economic thrive, yet there are ethical obstacles that arise when considering the type of labor and treatment these people

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814 Words | 4 Pages

In the 1700-1800’s, the use of African American slaves for backbreaking, unpaid work was at its prime. Despite the terrible conditions that slaves were forced to deal with, slave owners managed to convince themselves and others that it was not the abhorrent work it was thought to be. However, in the mid-1800’s, Northern and southern Americans were becoming more aware of the trauma that slaves were facing in the South. Soon, an abolitionist group began in protest, but still people doubted and questioned it.

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1301 Words | 6 Pages

This treatment of other living beings assured the mindset of the Europeans that this type of discrimination and abuse is justified because the Natives were not really people but tools or labor to be used by Europeans. As the importation of African Americans into the Caribbean for sugar plantations and then into North America, specifically the English colonies became more common, slavery became more and more popular, with few people seeing the complete lack of morality there was. The Europeans did not expect when arriving first in America that they would eventually lead to slavery that would only be abolished in

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313 Words | 2 Pages

Kindred Research 2: Medicine Long ago, diseases were spread rapidly amongst the country, and the lack of medical advancements did not leave much room for survival. Physicians were nowhere near as skilled as they are today, yet they were still important as they were the only hope for treatments. It has always been debatable, however, whether slaves had access to the same amount of medical attention as their owner. Despite the controversy, slaves were not subjected to the same medical attention for many reasons. For one, the doctors best interests were with the owners rather than the slaves themselves (“Birthing a Slave”).

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657 Words | 3 Pages

African people were enslaved by the millions and were used as tools of labor, and weren’t even regarded as humans,

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