The author of Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Chernoh Alpha M.Bah, explanation of the outbreak in Sierra Leon and how it influences people’s perception and the response to Ebola from both the political and social perceptive, is one of my favourite reading as it correlates to the topics discuss in lectures so far. As he demonstrated, structural violence in this case must be understood in the context of a regional history and global economy that have cultivated inequalities. For instance, it is no coincidence that Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are resource poor countries; their rich natural and human resources have long been extracted for foreign profit as opposed to being developed for the benefit of the general population. The lack of trust
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As the author made mention, since the 1800s, black oral history has being filled with tales of doctors who unfortunately kidnapped black people for research. As the author also mentioned, many doctors tested drugs on slaves and operated on black people to develop new surgical techniques without informed consent. As black people migrated from north to Washington and Baltimore, the number of medical schools offering money in exchange for bodies also increased. As black corpses were routinely exhumed from the graves for research, and underground shipping industry kept schools in the north and supplied them with black bodies from the south for anatomy courses. Hopkins, which was the same hospital Henrietta lacks went to, was built in the poor black neighborhood for the benefit of scientist- to give easy access to potential research subjects. In 1969, a Hopkins researcher used the blood samples from more than 7,000 neighborhood children – most of them black families- to look for a genetic predisposition to criminal behavior and also the researcher failed to get consent form all these families. This was the same situation when Henrietta lacks went to Hopkins for the treatment of her cervical cancer. The doctors failed to mention to her about the possible fertility loss when undergoing cancer treatments and also using her cells for scientific research. As demonstrated, medical researchers used only the minority groups for the invention of medicines. Today, drugs like BiDil are used for only African American but no other people of different race. What I have learned is that, racism in medicine may be seen as a historical context but it is still exit in today’s manufacture and usage of
As the author made mention, since the 1800s, black oral history has being filled with tales of doctors who unfortunately kidnapped black people for research. As the author also mentioned, many doctors tested drugs on slaves and operated on black people to develop new surgical techniques without informed consent. As black people migrated from north to Washington and Baltimore, the number of medical schools offering money in exchange for bodies also increased. As black corpses were routinely exhumed from the graves for research, and underground shipping industry kept schools in the north and supplied them with black bodies from the south for anatomy courses. Hopkins, which was the same hospital Henrietta lacks went to, was built in the poor black neighborhood for the benefit of scientist- to give easy access to potential research subjects. In 1969, a Hopkins researcher used the blood samples from more than 7,000 neighborhood children – most of them black families- to look for a genetic predisposition to criminal behavior and also the researcher failed to get consent form all these families. This was the same situation when Henrietta lacks went to Hopkins for the treatment of her cervical cancer. The doctors failed to mention to her about the possible fertility loss when undergoing cancer treatments and also using her cells for scientific research. As demonstrated, medical researchers used only the minority groups for the invention of medicines. Today, drugs like BiDil are used for only African American but no other people of different race. What I have learned is that, racism in medicine may be seen as a historical context but it is still exit in today’s manufacture and usage of