We The Dehumanization Of Henrietta By Elie Wiesel

Humans themselves enacted the most infamous eradication of human life in the history of man. One race has always viewed itself as being the supreme breed. Dehumanization is defined as “[the] failure to attribute feelings or qualities of mind to humans” (Yang, Jin, He, Fan, & Zhu, 2015). By dehumanizing all others, people justify their actions in saying that these things are not human, therefore, they do not feel and think in the same manner. Nazi Germany used this tactic to eradicate the Jews from their country and justify immoral scientific experimentation. Elie Wiesel, a Romanian journalist and Holocaust survivor, spent his life telling the story of people whom the Nazis abstracted (2016). One of his most famous quotes is as follows, “We

Physicians refer to Henrietta as “patient” and repeatedly place her behind her medical issues (Skloot, 2011). The lack of person first language results in an emphasis of the disease and not the individual. “Attributing a lack of [human] traits to people is akin to explicitly or implicitly perceiving or acting toward those people as though they lack the capacity to feel” (Yang, Jin, He, Fan, & Zhu, 2015). Scientists lost sights of Henrietta Lack as a human being: a creature of the same emotional capacity of themselves. The abbreviation of Henrietta’s cells to “HeLa” further works to distance the cells from their owner – a woman with thoughts, emotions and relationships. The absence of empathy extends to the Lacks family. When it was found that HeLa cells contaminated many of the cells lines around the world scientists scrambled for a definite marker unique to the HeLa so they might contain the HeLa infestation. For this they turned to Henrietta’s family. Genetic researcher Victor McKusick and assistant Susan Hsu began to take blood from Henrietta’s children and husband, David Lacks, without having the decency to fully explain the situation to Henrietta’s closest family members (Skloot, 2011). Mourning is a physically, mentally, and psychologically draining experience. Humans place a specific regard to mourning in which we attempt to identify with each other across cultures, age and race. When interacting with the Lack family, the flippant attitude of scientists pertaining to Henrietta and her cells furthers the implication that Henrietta Lacks was an abstraction to the scientific community. McKusick states, “I suspect there was no effort to explain anything in great detail. They would have just said, ‘... we would like to have that blood from you people’” (Skloot, 2011). Referring to the Lacks as ‘you people’ shows great disregard for their humanity. McKusick and