Summary of Second Book Chat: March 12, 2012

Were Henrietta’s race, class and gender responsible for the way she was treated?

Although John Hopkins was established to help the underserved in 1954 they had separate facilities for white and black people.

“I was pretty much horrified by the way the family was treated. African Americans were discriminated against, if you wanted to do some research you went to the African American population because many of them were less educated in general.” (Dr. Garcia)

What I found interesting was the testing of African American subjects over history.  I found it very disturbing, because in times of slavery they had a constant supply of corpses being sent to Northern medical universities. (Hansel Corsa)

To read about this family that wasn’t able to understand just basic biology terms and what was going on and the way they were treated, it really hurt me. (Tanisha Williams)

“Unethical” research and profit

Hansel noted that it was 3 Jewish doctors who refused to inject the patients with these cells and later resigned.  They knew about the famous 1947 Nuremberg Trials in Germany. Afterwards a ten-point code of ethics was established governing human experimentation worldwide, it stated, “Voluntary human consent was essential.” But since Southam claimed to not know about it and since the Nuremberg code was not a law, it did not have much bite. The NIH later implemented strict requirements to qualify for funding on all research on human subjects

“We have a have a duty to be responsible. It implies an ethical responsibility in terms of research, as well as in our professional realm, to help those who are uneducated and those who don’t have the information we have.” (Hansel Corsa)

There are some very unscrupulous scientists that are just going for the fame (the Nobel prize), who are willing to do anything and everything no matter what is in their way.  That is why it is so important for us scientist, if we see something that is not right, we say something. (Dr. Garcia)

“Do no harm, but give me your arm so that I can inject you with some cancer” (Daisy Johnson) in response to John Chester Southam, the virologist who injected Henrietta’s cancer cells on human subjects.

Of course what also amazed me is that legally once those cells were out of body you have no rights to them, which really kind of bothers me.  The trouble is the courts have substantiated that.  There’s no way that Henrietta’s family is going to ever get any compensation for this whatsoever. (Dr. Garcia)

Also, this book chat would not be possible if it were not for the insightful participation of the MORE program participants: Bertha Martin, Hansel Corsa, Daisy Johnson, Tanisha Williams, and Dr. Ray Garcia.