The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Michelle Reid
August 2, 2012
Writing Workshop

Blog Number II

Our healthcare system is configured in a profit by profit basis; what new discoveries are accomplished, will only reach the few who can gain access to it. As a capitalist nation, the United States works by the trickle down method, where technological advances in medicine reach the public long after they have become available to the wealthy. In the book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” written by Rebecca Skloot, we note several cases where altruistic ideas transform the poor and uneducated into caged subjects waiting on experimentation. The impoverished are trammeled by the demand of technological progression and their constraints span beyond poverty and inequality to the oppression of the masses.

David Korn of Harvard University states, “I think people are morally obligated to allow their bits and pieces to be used to advance knowledge to help others. Since everybody benefits, everybody can accept the small risks of having their tissue scraps used in research.” The idea that everyone has an obligation to contribute is an idea that assumes an even distribution of the discovery. Korn’s statement is wholly void of realistic situations occurring world-wide, his opinions are ignorant of social theory, particularly the structural constraints placed on certain demographic groups.

            Henrietta Lacks, a poor, uneducated, African American young woman in the 1950’s reported to the only medical facility that would treat her; John Hopkins Hospital where she was treated for cervical cancer. In “The Place of Radium in Treatment of Cancer,” by Antoine Lacassagne (1938), the most technologically advanced method of cancer treatment is detailed. Radium was considered the perfect aid to all cancer, it disintegrated cells that were pathogenic, and the treatment was completely versatile. Lacassagne details the countless applications of this treatment, spanning from cervical to cancers of the mouth. The methods in this journal also reveal the proper utilization of x-ray therapies as only useful in superficial cancers, of little thickness and depth. It clearly states that previous trials done to treat more deeply situated cancers were unsuccessful due to the lack of penetration by x-rays (10). Henrietta Lacks’ cancer therapy had gone awry; Skloot mentions, “The skin from Henrietta’s breasts to her pelvis was charred a deep black from the radiation” (48). Although Lacks received modern therapy for her cancer, it is hard to ignore the fact that Lacassagne paper, published twelve years prior to Lacks’ diagnosis, was common knowledge to practitioners at the time. This fact only begs the question that Lacks’ charred skin was due to neglect, malpractice, and experimentation.

The mental and physical well being of a woman like Henrietta Lacks was by no means a priority for practitioners. The patient-practitioner relationship between Lacks and Dr. Wharton (the physician who attended her at John Hopkins Hospital), was that of tending to the inferior. If the opportunity to perform research on patients occurred; no moral dilemma would arise. When Korn states that the “bits and pieces” of every being belongs to the progression of science by moral obligation, what is meant in this context is that the bits of the poor are the obligation of the educated and rich.  

There exists immense confusion among the kind of moral obligation authority figures in science have to answer science’s burning questions. The Crownsville State Hospital, formerly known as the Hospital for the Negro Insane, provided a surplus of “unwanted” patients during the late 1950’s; this was the ideal ground for medical research. Elsie, Lacks’ eldest daughter, was admitted into Crownsville at a young age because she was a mentally disabled epileptic child. It is said that Elsie was subjected into  “Pneumoencephalography and skull x-ray” studies which involved “drilling holes into the skulls of research subjects draining the fluid surrounding their brains…to allow crisp x-rays of the brain through the skull” (276). The experiments that many patients like Elsie have been subjected to, are arguably of seldom importance; there was no reason why the necessity for the perfect photograph should entail the complete demoralization and torture of any being. Korn’s aforementioned statement does not distinguish the extent of the contribution of human bodies; in essence the patients in Crownsville Hospital have become the “tissue scraps” of society. Elsie Lacks’ case only serves to display the dearth of constraints placed upon those who seek to use the disadvantaged for their personal gain.
            The consequences generated by healthcare systems in wealthy nations have wholly intended the ramifications that have come about from the advancement in medical research. The rise of neoliberalism has crept into all aspects of politics, economics, and healthcare, and has caused the wide spread massacre of the economically disadvantaged (19).  In the text, Infections and Inequalities by Paul Farmer, he describes the state of urgency in the nation of Haiti; curable, preventable infectious diseases have generated a modern plague. Farmer recounts cases where wealthy nations have provided outdated medications for the ever-evolving Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The reason for this is simply put, it was not cost-effective.

The “free market” ideology in science has contributed significantly to the cases of immorality in the biomedical field. The progression of biomedical science should not have been paved with the remnants of those who have suffered the injustices and horrors of oppression. Those in poverty will continue to become an increasingly vulnerable target of unequal healthcare. As long as the economic philosophy of neoliberalism exists, and as long as public sentiment adheres to the ideology that Korn resides by, equal treatment of all beings will cease to exist.