Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman suffering from cervical cancer whose extracted cancer cells spawned the HeLa cell line, which is an immortalized cell line that can continue dividing forever. HeLa cells are used in scientific research on viruses and cancer. It was even used to test the polio virus vaccine. However, the circumstances surrounding the extraction of those cells and the effect of choice on her family, chronicled in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, offer insight into flaws within the healthcare system.
Henrietta’s cells were extracted in 1951 without her knowledge, and her family was never made aware of how her cells led to many new discoveries and made scientists rich. Johns Hopkins, the hospital at which Lacks was treated, was the only hospital in Henrietta’s area that would treat African Americans, and the hospital often did experiments on its colored patients. Not just Johns Hopkins experimented on colored patients. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study which studied the effects of untreated syphilis on African-American sharecroppers by not informing the sharecroppers of their diagnosis of syphilis and purposely leaving their syphilis untreated was going on from 1932-1972. These two instances show that racism is a problem in healthcare. Racism has nowhere close to disappeared, as evidenced by the Black Lives Matter movement a few years ago.
Henrietta Lacks’ cells were extracted 75 years ago. The Tuskegee Syphilis study ended 53 years ago. Just because nonconsensual medical research ended does not mean it will not make a reappearance or influence the coming generations. In fact, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study has already influenced Americans. According to a 2000 study by Shavers et al., 51% of African Americans, as well as 17% of whites, indicated that their knowledge of the Tuskegee Study would affect future participation decisions. Participants in medical research are important to develop new drugs and study human physiology in order to gain a better understanding of disease for the purpose of improving treatment. There are ethical ways to achieve both goals without immoral experiments such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study or the Stanford Prison Experiment. Distrust of medical research caused by the Tuskegee Syphilis Study can extend to the larger healthcare system as well. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute, As a consequence of distrust of the medical system Black men living close to Tuskegee study participants are “less likely to receive medical care and die at a younger age”. The reason why these men are less likely to receive healthcare is most likely due to prejudice against the healthcare system. The worst part is that this prejudice is supported by evidence and you cannot argue that it won’t happen again because racism is an ingrained societal issue that probably will not go away. This distrust in healthcare is shared by Henrietta Lacks’ descendants, according to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In the book, it is described that the descendants only go to Johns Hopkins Hospital if they have no choice. All of the Lacks children had medical issues for which they sought out little treatment on the grounds of cost and their mother dying in Hopkins. Outside of the distrust such a lack of consent causes, it can also become harder to intervene. In this way, the medical field would have created its own enemy to public health.
Outside of the direct impact of racist and nonconsensual practices in medicine, the impact of such practices on larger society can be just as toxic. The distrust towards medicine can extend outside of circles like Clover, Virginia, and Tuskegee,Alabama. The internet, for better or for worse, makes it easier to learn about the horror stories related to medical research studies, which is good because it encourages scepticism, but it also makes it harder to advocate for good things such as vaccines. Vaccines are vital to protecting against disease and also protecting the larger population through the principle of “herd immunity.” Herd immunity occurs when a substantial part of the population is vaccinated against a contagious illness, which reduces the spread of the illness, which in turn protects those who cannot get vaccinated against the said illness. This is why there is so much insistence to get vaccinated during flu season and to get vaccinated against all kinds of illnesses. Herd immunity is an important reason why smallpox has been eradicated. Distrust in healthcare would extend to vaccines, which would hold back herd immunity if enough people decided not to vaccinate. And it is hard to advocate for vaccines towards such people because racism is not going away. The even harder part is that there is no way to offer reassurances of no racism because racism at the core was never quantitative. It was always qualitative.
Fundamentally, Western society declares that racism is a bad thing because of the injustice it causes towards people who deserve to be treated as equals, no matter the colour of their skin. I agree with this, but I would say what makes racism more dangerous is how it turns us against each other and closes our minds to potentially beneficial things.
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