This reading consisted of an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In this excerpt the author has visited the home of the living relatives of Henrietta. They show distaste and skepticism towards her due to her being white and asking questions about their mother, Henrietta Lacks. However they seem to warm up to her and tell her about what had happened to their mother. Henrietta awas a cancer patient, and when she died the doctors had asked permission to use her cells, on the premise that it would help prevent her children from dying from the same illness. However, this was not the case, Henrietta 's cells were used to facilitate many different medical advancements but no compensation was given to her family despite their deteriorating …show more content…
We are not seen as human enough to be consenting as well as told the truth about what they are doing to us. Black people have been subjected to many medical and social experiments throughout history. Some could even argue that the "projects" was just that, a project to see how we would could interact and live with one another. Not only this but I am currently reading a book entitled Blood sugar, which is about the pharmaceutical industry and the money it makes off of black citizens. I have also heard tales of the government trying to police the amount of black babies born through "free" contraception methods. Our bodies have never been ours and still to this day we are being used for medical purposes that are borderline unethical. I read an article which stated that aborted black babies were used for their melanin to develop some kind of solar cell. This to me seems to be information that should be released to the public or at least the mother of the aborted babies. Black bodies for medical consumption is not a new thing, however I hope one day it will become a nonexistent