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The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

816 Words4 Pages

In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was mentioned. Throughout Henrietta’s time of being sick with cervical cancer, she was not told she had the disease. Scientists took samples of Henrietta’s cells and brought them to the prestigious Tuskegee Institute for further study (Skloot pg. 23). It was at this same institute that the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was performed. The U.S Public Health Service Team Department was the one to sponsor the study (Batten). This particular study was done to see the different effects syphilis had on African American males. Throughout this study, there were many things that were done unethically and took many years to be made known. The Tuskegee syphilis study took place at the highly known Tuskegee Institute College, in Alabama in 1932. The PHS (Public Health Service) department recruited local doctors and nurses who would not treat the men with syphilis (Clinton). They had white physicians within their department administer the study (Batten). There were 400 …show more content…

Several doctors who participated in the study continued to justify the experiment.Dr. J. R. Heller, who on one occasion had referred to the test subjects as the "Ethiopian population,"(Brandt). This sounds potentially racist. In 1997, Bill Clinton finally issued his apology to the African Americans and also the federal government, Only 8 out of the 399 participants who had syphilis were still alive (Clinton). Bill Clinton spoke of the mistrust and racial animus to a group of survivors and said theses words, “We can look you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry” (Clinton).The surviving people were given $37,500, members of the control group were given $16,000, and each control subject received $5,000. The government is making sure to stop the disease so it does not end as a catastrophic event

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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.

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Henrietta Lacks, the “Patient” HeLa cells made history beyond polio vaccines and outer space experiments. In Rebecca Skloot’s bestseller, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” HeLa cells went beyond just the successful research, cures, and treatments - they told the story of the Lacks family, and the unethical behaviors in the medical field of the 1950s. Henrietta Lacks was treated as a research subject, rather than just as a patient. Her physicians unethically withheld information relating to informed consent, and uses of her biospecimen, while sharing her private information. They ignored her rights of voluntary choice, disrespected her confidentiality, and lacked communication with both her, and her family, discriminating against her race.

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