Literature Book Summary

In a perfect world, race, ethnicity and culture would have no negative effect on the medical care we receive. The effect is due to historical heritage more than skin color. What is meant by this statement?

Provide examples (more than one) with page references where historical heritage affects the ability of the Lacks or Lee family to negotiate the health care system.  Consider health literacy, communication, ethics, and health disparities.

The statement above is referring to what you've learned and been taught from your past experiences versus prejudices against skin color.  The Lacks family is prejudiced against John Hopkins Hospital due to the bad treatment that they received before and after the harvesting of Henrietta's cells, as well as the treatments that were done to other black people. When Henrietta went into the doctor for treatments for her cervical cancer, the doctors used radium (a chemical element).  This radium charred her from her breasts down to her pelvis.  "Sadie couldn't believe it and told Hennie that they burnt her as black as tar."¹ So from the beginning, the family wasn't too keen on the hospital giving care to one of their family members. 

Then came the actual taking of the cells without a signed written or verbal consent from Henrietta.  Now, she did sign a consent from John Hopkins in 1951 which said:  I hereby give consent to the staff of John Hopkins Hospital to perform any preoperative procedures and under any anesthetic either local or general that they may deem necessary in the proper surgical care and treatment of____ ¹.   The consent should have asked her if they could take her cells for research, but it didn't.  The family never knew that Hennie didn't give consent until later.

The next thing that frustrated the family was twenty years after their mother's death, John Hopkins called the kin of Henrietta and asked them to come in for blood testing to make sure that they didn't have cancer.  Henrietta's children thought that Hopkins was being nice and making sure that they wouldn't get cancer, where all they were doing was checking to see if the Henrietta's children's cells matched that of their mother's.

Sonny and Bobbette were talking about how they were frustrated because "John Hopkins didn't give us no information about anything." ¹ The family didn't trust John Hopkins and didn't know if they were making a profit on the cells or not.  Once again from prior experiences, the family did not trust the people from that hospital.

In 1969, Hopkins did research on 7,000 young black kids by taking blood samples to look for genetic predisposition to criminal behavior. ¹   No consents were used.  The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit on this claiming that the study violated the boys’ civil rights.  Deborah would say that you needed to be careful because Hopkins would snatch up the black folk and use them for testing.  These facts only made Deborah and the family even more paranoid and not trusting of John Hopkins.

In the late 90's two women sued Hopkins for knowingly exposing their children to lead and didn't let the parents know that their children had high lead levels. ¹   This was a study examining lead abatement methods, and all the families involved were black.  This was another example of Hopkins taking advantage of the black community. 

You will also identify one resource that helps others to understand the concept that you are writing about. You must explain why this resource is useful and why we should care about what the author(s) have to say.  Note: a web page with multiple authors is not an appropriate resource for this assignment).

The historical heritage that I was using examples to explain was showing all the things that not only happened to the Lacks family at John Hopkins hospital, but all the studies that took place on black people.  This pattern made the family very untrustworthy towards the hospital, doctors and the health system.  The Lacks family was to the point of paranoia in some instances.   The resource that I used to help understand this concept of mistrust is a book called “Segregation and Mistrust:  Diversity, Isolation and Social Cohesion.” 

This resource was useful when comparing what happened in the book versus to everyday people and how we trust them.  The author talks about a lot of different types of trust and it makes people less likely to see risks wherever they turn. ² I think of my neighborhood.  I know all of them well and we all help each other out with things and do a lot of together.  My wife and I might not agree with them on certain topics, but that’s okay because every individual is different.  We do though have the same moral values.  We have those certain principles branded into us that makes us know right before wrong.  In the book, they talk about moralistic trust.  That is the belief that others share your fundamental moral values and therefore should be treated as you would wish to be treated by them. ⁶ Since that is true about our neighbors, it is more likely that we want to be around them and do things than the couple that lives in the house down the street that is very confrontational and opinionated.  So, with that being said, we have a form of trust that bonds us together, where the people down the street have mistrust.  In reading this particular part of the book, it makes me reflect on situations that I have at my job.  I get a lot done with certain people because we trust each other know that we have each other’s backs.  On the other hand, there are some people that I steer clear of because they like to gossip and start rumors.  I am still nice to those people, but we do not carry on conversations.

I think it’s important to listen to what this author has to say because he has written many books regarding trust.  Four of his books that are good reads are: “The Moral Foundations of Trust,” “Corruption, Inequality, and Trust,” “The Historical Roots of Corruption,” and “Social and Political Trust.”

This author has been around the world and spoke at many conferences regarding this topic, so when I saw that he wrote about segregation and mistrust, I thought that would be a good book to compare the “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” 

I learned from the author how segregation is different from diversity.  Segregation is all about isolating people of diverse ethnicities and races from each other. ² Diversity is a condition in having different elements.  Diversity can be good or bad, where segregation is looked as bad.  Segregation typically leads to outcomes like crime and less well-being.   Trust then is more difficult to obtain with segregation while diversity has much smaller effects.

The topic that I liked the most was where he talked about how people trust people or groups that they are similar to.  He talked about how a group of white people meeting another group of white people would be just fine, but if that second group was black, the white group tends to be uneasy and mistrust the other group.  Why is that?  An example that I like is a group of poor people walk over to a group of rich people.  The rich people mistrust them as well because they are not like them.  It doesn’t have to be the color of someone’s skin that makes them mistrust, but in the case of the Lacks family it did.  The Hopkins hospital had predominantly white people working there and the people doing experiments on black people were white.  They also associated mistrust to the hospital because of their past experiences.  In summary, this book helped define the historical heritage of the Lacks family along with all the mistrust surrounding Henrietta’s cells.

1. Skloot R. The immortal life of henrietta lacks. pbk ed. New York: Broadway Paperbacks; 2011:49, 31, 168-169, 167, 167-168.

2. Uslander E. Segregation and Mistrust. pbk ed.   New York: Cambridge University Press; 2012