The Dehumanization of Henrietta Lacks
Dehumanization is s a process that undermines and/or strips someone of his or her humanity and individuality. The dehumanization of Henrietta is one of the central themes and storylines of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. From the moment the Geys discover the incredible ability of Henrietta’s cells, those cells take center stage, and the human whom they originated from is reduced to nothing more than a source. Neither the scientists who first packaged Henrietta’s cells, nor the thousands of scientists and doctors who would later use her cells for groundbreaking research and medical discoveries, thought about their human source. Henrietta ceased being a young, Black mother of five, and instead became the source of a cell line that had the potential to change the world. Mary Kubicek’s reaction when she performs an autopsy on Henrietta’s body is an illustration of this fact. During the autopsy when Kubicek sees Henrietta’s painted toenails, they make her realize for the first time that behind the HeLa cells was a real person, a live woman. In her own words, she had “never thought of it that way” (Pg. 158).
The dehumanization of Henrietta is particularly difficult for her family to understand and cope with. To them, the HeLa cells are not a separate entity, or merely a culture of cells on a petri dish. They are the living and sole remaining pieces of their family member on Earth. To them, Henrietta is HeLa, and HeLa is Henrietta. So for example, when Deborah and other Lackses read newspapers articles about HeLa cells being crossed with tobacco plants, sent into space, or injected with AIDS and Ebola, they don’t visualize these acts being done to microscopic cells. Rather, they see their mother, wife, and friend being subjected to inhuman physical trials. And when they read about the amazing and life-saving discoveries made because of HeLa, they attribute it to their mother’s generosity and propensity for taking care of others. As Gary, Henrietta’s nephew, says near the end of the book, “those cells are Henrietta,” no matter what science or medicine may claim.
Immortality
Immortality is another central part of Henrietta’s story, and must be considered from two separate angles. The first is the literal and physical immortality of Henrietta’s cells. Henrietta’s cells are so vital to science because they are the first immortal human cells ever grown in a lab. Her cells did not die once they were separated from her body. They continued to survive and grow, thus earning themselves the “immortal” moniker. Immortality can also be viewed from a metaphysical perspective. Though she has been dead and buried for 66 years, Henrietta has lived on because of her cells. The importance of her cells to modern medicine and science means that she lives on in the minds of scientists and doctors around the world. Furthermore, she lives on in the hearts of her family, who view Henrietta and HeLa not as separate entities, which is the common scientific practice, but as one and the same.
Medical Ethics
Throughout the book Skloot raises several crucial questions about medical ethics and the rights of human subjects. When Henrietta went for her first cancer treatment and her cells were harvested for study, she was not asked or informed that samples would be taken. Furthermore, Henrietta was not told that the treatments she received for her cancer would leave her infertile. These two gross medical misdemeanors are a tip of the iceberg, and shockingly were not uncommon for the times. “Benevolent deception” was par for the course for many doctors, and there was no law requiring doctors to ask living patients for tissue samples. Back then, it was assumed that doctors knew best and had the best outcomes for their patients in mind when performing procedures and making decisions. In addition, many patients such as Henrietta who were Black and poor were receiving treatment for free. To doctors, this meant that using such patients as research subjects in lieu of payment was a fair trade. Whether or not such practices were justified is one of the many questions of medical ethics Skloot raises.
The book also touches on other abuses of medical ethics, including the experiments of Dr. Southam, in which he injected frail and sick patients with cancer cells in order to see if their immune systems would more quickly fight off the disease. This was an experiment of unknown benefit and potentially devastating effects for victims.
Another medical ethics question is whether or not Henrietta’s family deserves some sort of compensation for or ownership of her cells. Do those cells belong to the remaining members of Henrietta’s line, or do they belong to modern science? Though no one asked Henrietta’s consent when they took her cells originally, should her family be asked for their consent now, each time a scientist uses her cells for a study? Or do the astronomical benefits Henrietta’s cells have provided for the human race, including the creation of several vaccines, outweigh the needs and desires of a single family? These are all quandaries Skloot leaves the reader with.
Racism in Medicine
American medicine is plagued by deep-rooted racism, which manifests in the unethical and biased treatment of Black people within the medical system. Large-scale events such as the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which doctors took advantage of uneducated Black Southerners and used their bodies to study the progression of syphilis, have shaped distrust of medicine among members of Black communities. The Tuskegee study is not an isolated incident: another example of racism within medicine are the Mississippi Appendectomies, hysterectomies performed on Black women without their knowledge or consent to stop them from reproducing. As public knowledge of these atrocities and others swept across America, particularly within the Black community, many Black people grew distrustful of doctors and medicine. Stories like Henrietta’s, where her cells were taken without her knowledge or that of her family’s, were widespread and compounded the issue. The result is people like Henrietta’s husband Day refusing medical treatment.
Separate and Unequal
A perfunctory lesson on 20th century US history and politics would quickly reveal that the legal doctrine of “separate but equal” was anything but equal. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, several examples are provided that illustrate “separate and not equal” would be a more accurate phrase to describe how white and Black people were treated in America. Indeed, the different (and lesser) treatment Black patients received in hospitals is another major theme of the work. To begin with, Black patients were oftentimes rejected from hospitals because of their inability to pay. Hospitals such as John Hopkins, whose founding purpose was to help those who otherwise couldn’t get medical care, were far in between. If and when Black patients did receive care, it was at significantly later stages in their illnesses than white patients (Pg. 103).
Furthermore, Black patients received fewer pain medications and had higher mortality rates than their white counterparts. So even Henrietta, who purportedly received the same treatment a white patient with her symptoms would have received, was a victim of this separate and not equal ideology. The differing care and treatment Black patients received can also be linked to the racial fear of doctors and medicine. Why would Black people feel comfortable going to hospitals if they knew they’d receive lesser care for life-threatening illnesses?
Religion and the Supernatural
Religion, particularly how it relates to the supernatural, is an integral part of Henrietta’s story and Skloot’s book in general. Like many Black Southerners born during the 20th century, Henrietta’s family was and remained highly religious. Many of them had faith-based explanations for the virulence of Henrietta’s cancer. Her sister believed it was a punishment from God to Henrietta specifically because she didn’t care for their ailing father. Henrietta’s son, however, believed all diseases could be traced back to Adam and Eve’s original sin of eating the forbidden apple. Only Cootie, Henrietta’s first cousin, believed a supernatural force was the source of Henrietta’s illness. He thought that disease-causing spirits were to blame for her condition (pg. 330).
In addition to shaping theories about the cause of Henrietta’s cancer, religion and the supernatural also impact the conversations surrounding the harvesting of Henrietta’s cells and her immortality. While some believe it’s God’s will that scientists were able to produce vaccines from Henrietta’s cells, others think such actions are tampering in God’s domain (pg. 380). On the other end of the belief spectrum, some think God choose Henrietta specifically to become an immortal being. This latter belief is an interesting blend of religion and the supernatural, and is the backbone of the major conceit of Skloot’s book. Although Henrietta Lacks died in 1951, her contributions to modern medicine and science have immortalized her.
Miscommunication About Science
One of the reasons the Geys are able to harvest Henrietta’s cells without her consent or knowledge is because of the general ignorance most laypeople had concerning medicine and science. As Deborah explains during her speech at the first annual HeLa Cancer Control Symposium, no one in the medical field took the time to explain to her mother or to her family what was happening with Henrietta’s cells. Largely uneducated, especially with regards to high-level science, the Lackses didn’t even know what questions to ask. The questions they did ask revealed their lack of science education. For example, after hearing a researcher talk about cloning, Deborah asked if it were possible to take the DNA from a HeLa cell, inject it into one of Deborah’s eggs, and bring Henrietta back to life.
In Skloot’s discussion of science education, she extends her view beyond Henrietta and her case to the larger public. While what happened to Henrietta is one egregious case, she does provide other instances of doctors taking advantage of the pedestrian person’s ignorance. One example is John Moore, whose cancerous spleen cells led to the creation of the Mo cell line without his knowledge. For years Moore had been giving his consent to the cancer researcher who helped save him from leukemia, but he had no idea the researcher was developing technology using his cells. As Deborah eloquently says later in the book, “Scientists do all kinds of experiments and you never know what they doin” (pg. 366).
