More than 70 years after doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells without her knowledge, a lawyer for her descendants said they have reached a settlement with a biotechnology company they sued in 2021, accusing its leaders of reaping billions of dollars from a racist medical system.
I doubt a settlement would ever be good enough, but at least it’s something. Just another example of America fucking over a black woman.
I’m sorry, but this is incredibly simplistic. How did they fuck her over? Lack of informed consent was certainly there, but was (unfortunately) not uncommon.
I would say the lack of informed consent would be exactly it. I’m not sure why it not being uncommon makes a difference to whether or not it was an injustice.
Essentially then, she and everyone else was fucked. Again, it’s a simplistic view that doesn’t account for degree of harm.
Everyone else didn’t earn various medical companies billions of dollars.
And let’s not forget her cells are the foundation of modern vaccine research, without them we’d still have waves of Polio and who knows what else. Even outside of the financial aspect we owe a lot to Henrietta Lacks as a species.
And it is beyond cruel that she was used like a lab rat, like many Black Americans have been through the country’s history. It’s not about the degree of harm, IMO, sure they didn’t cut off her arms, but she was a systematic victim of our medical industry and given no compensation or credit for the advancements in global medicine during her time.
I’m not sure what to make of the argument- on one hand I get your point for sure, no one wants to be profited off of. That said, she could not have possibly been credited in her time as she passed in the same year to biopsy was performed. Furthermore, the cell line was taken from the remaining tissue for her biopsy, which was destined to be destroyed or discarded. I think this argues against the idea that she was uniquely victimized.
This is certainly not to discount her contribution, it’s just that the harm here (lack of informed consent) was pervasive and widespread. If there’s another another harm committed, please enlighten.
Having not RTFA, did they take cells from other people without adequate consent? If yes it doesn’t matter that they weren’t as valuable, the same offense happened.
Of course it matters. That’s like saying it doesn’t matter that George Floyd was black because other non-black people have been killed by police. This was the exploitation of a black woman’s body for profit and her family was never compensated. Why you think that’s acceptable is beyond me.
I don’t think that’s acceptable. What I’m hearing from you is that the exploitation of a black women trumps the exploitation of everyone else for the same offense.
Lots of people claim to be lovers of science and ignore or are oblivious to the fact that the majority of the history of science is filled with crazy shit. Glad TSF paid up, an acknowledgment that wrong was done.
