Henrietta Lacks Seems Like a Nice Person, but Not a Scientific Hero
astralcodexten.com
astralcodexten.com
"As was then the practice, no consent was required to culture the cells obtained from Lacks's treatment." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
It is fashionable to treat the smallest misstep of the doctors trying to save her life, and the lives of countless others, as some unforgivable harm. But I don't buy it.
Because it didn't happen to you. You have no skin in that game.
> Some people are going to tell me I’m underplaying the race angle, and that black women need heroes. I think this is the worst part. There are thousands of black female doctors, black female scientists, etc. Whenever we recognize white people who have contributed to medicine, it’s Brilliant Dr. So-And-So Who Cured A Deadly Disease. What message does it send black women if the most prominent medical hero that society gives them is someone with zero medical ability or medicine-related-virtues, whose only contribution was passively letting someone else take a clump of their cells without her knowledge? Did you know a black woman, Mattiedna Johnson, helped cure scarlet fever? No you did not, because whenever people want to talk about black women in medicine they talk about Henrietta Lacks - who was not, technically, in medicine.
Funny how quickly you reach for hyperbole - if you own a plot of land and people discover some ore or treasure there, are you an "extortioner" for asking a share of its value? So when someone extract value from a piece of your body, it shouldn't apply? (And I am talking about moral, not legal ideals)
I give blood too, and I had some genetic testing done on my cells. I signed a paper to allow further use of both for research. There's a reason we implemented such obligations.
But the mere fact you went hyperbolic - nothing to do with disgust at a *black* *woman* daring to ask for money, huh? There's a lot of words you could have used - "ask for", "request", "demand" but you went straight for "extort" - when there is no constraint, nothing has been done, and the moral failure is clearly on the side of the people who took and used the cells and clearly gained money and social status with them.
A victim is someone who experiences something bad done to him. Mrs. Lacks was a victim of medical practices we would not support today. She didn’t have a choice: indeed, it was the failure to respect her right to choose the disposition of her remains which was the injustice she suffered.
And the thing is... the things they're posting are really boring. Like pg's "origin of Woke" that even HN dragged.
I get people's point that the past 10 years have stifled interesting discussion. Well, let's see it then. Show me the interesting discussion. This is not it.
But yeah, congratulations to the anti-DEI mob, you can now make comedies again where the punchline is "a man is wearing a dress" or "look at his funny foreign accent".
Whoop-de-doo, that shit was getting plain tired years before it ever got cancelled.
I don't think this is particularly spicy. What posts are you thinking of? pg has criticized woke for at least a decade so that's not a new thing either.
Would respect him more if he'd realised that made the whole thing not worth writing about, but I guess he just couldn't let it go.
> United States Rep. Kwesi Mfume (D-Md) filed legislation to posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal to Henrietta Lacks for her distinguished contributions to science. The award is one of the most prestigious civilian honors given by the United States government
But the actual criteria for the medal is nothing to do with heroism:
> made a major and long-standing impact on American history and culture.
Which I think is a bar she (and 9/11 victims) clears easily.