A person’s perspective is a key factor in their personality. If a politician has an early 1900’s racist mindset then the public knows they’ll attempt to limit the right of non-whites. If a male employer has a deeply rooted sexist mindset than it can be inferred that he would never employ women. These are all simple decisions that if implemented could have long lasting effects on a community, but what if someone’s perspective leads to a decision whose repercussions will literally last for an eternity. Such is the case with Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cell controversy, in which a group of scientists at John Hopkins University extracted cells from a young black woman named Henrietta Lacks without her knowledge and sold them to other scientists
…show more content…
Many ground breaking medical achievements were reached during the life of Henrietta Lacks, however that is not to say that the character of this period’s scientists should be determined by their positive achievements. Scientist and researchers, such as Alex Carrell who won a Noble Prize for his discoveries, lead the community with their outlandish ideals and experiments. However Carrell held many racist beliefs and his research was governed by them. “(He sought) ways to preserve what he saw as the superior white race, which he believed was being polluted by less intelligent and inferior stock, namely the poor…and non-white.”(49). Mentioning Alex Carrell’s racism in the novel gives context to the perspective the scientists at John Hopkins University held of Henrietta and the dozens of other low income black women in the region. Being overly dedicated to their work caused Grey Tilinde ,the man who organized the cell extraction procedures, to never introspect on Henrietta’s identity or what her opinion of the experiments would have been had she ever known about them. Instead they viewed the women as an end-supply of easily attainable test subjects. “…as Howard Jones once wrote ‘Hopkins, with its large indigent black population had no dearth of clinic material.’” This kind of attitude
Many ground breaking medical achievements were reached during the life of Henrietta Lacks, however that is not to say that the character of this period’s scientists should be determined by their positive achievements. Scientist and researchers, such as Alex Carrell who won a Noble Prize for his discoveries, lead the community with their outlandish ideals and experiments. However Carrell held many racist beliefs and his research was governed by them. “(He sought) ways to preserve what he saw as the superior white race, which he believed was being polluted by less intelligent and inferior stock, namely the poor…and non-white.”(49). Mentioning Alex Carrell’s racism in the novel gives context to the perspective the scientists at John Hopkins University held of Henrietta and the dozens of other low income black women in the region. Being overly dedicated to their work caused Grey Tilinde ,the man who organized the cell extraction procedures, to never introspect on Henrietta’s identity or what her opinion of the experiments would have been had she ever known about them. Instead they viewed the women as an end-supply of easily attainable test subjects. “…as Howard Jones once wrote ‘Hopkins, with its large indigent black population had no dearth of clinic material.’” This kind of attitude