#henrietta lacks

Please read that again: White institutions experimented on young Black men to observe what effects syphilis and other STDs would have on human beings.

What they did NOT do was, experiment on Black men exposed to syphilis to see what would happen to Black people.

Do you understand the implications here?

THEY KNEW THAT BLACK MEN WERE HUMAN BEINGS, JUST. LIKE. THEM.

White people knew this. They understood that if a disease affects a human being who happened to be Black, then it would likely have similar effects on white people. Racists have always understood that Black human beings were human, just like them.

This fact makes racism even more evil and insidious.

And yet, we still have things like medical racism, where “doctors” and “healthcare professionals” treat Black people—not “people of color” but specifically Black people—as if we are somehow different; as if we somehow do not experience pain in the same way as other human beings.

Here is the hypocrisy: Black people are human enough to experiment on, and we are human enough to use our very cells for cures to cancers that effect all humans, but somehow we still are not quite human enough to be treated humanely … we aren’t quite human enough to be treated equally. Not human enough to be seen as human.

You know how capitalism privatizes the wealth but socializes the poverty? It’s exactly the same with anti-Blackness. Institutions will monetize Blackness when it is profitable, and demonize Blackness at all other times.

This is not a mistake, nor is it coincidental that this paradigm - anti-Blackness, racism and profitizing pain & inequalities - aligns so neatly with capitalism.

pictuir de cuntuir cealla a comeadtear DNA géanóm fanas tairge istigh ionnas iad a clonail, a glaotar "matta". ta an mias Petri i lamh an oibreoir cheann le mata cealla de line humuncuil trileoir a usaidtear chun ailse a scrudu, a fuair tinn le ailse sa mais riobh iad a chuir i ubhagan chun humuncuil lan a crothu.

a pictuir of several cell culture "mats" in petri dishes containing the DNA of each type of commercial faun breed. the petri dish in the workers hand contains a mat of a commissioned tester humunculi line that was designed to study aggressive types of cancer, which ended up getting cancer before being used to make a live model.

teagann na cealla a usaidtear chun geanom fanas a cruthu o bean darbh anim Henrietta Lacks, bhi a ailse cealla na chead cealla daoine a raibh abalta athchruthaigh i saotharlann i mais Petri, agus fos ta a cealla ar usaid innu. faoi ta pictuir den cead foladoirtor beo a glaotar "henry" i 2005 in aice le pictuir de Henrietta Lacks a comeadtear sa saotharlann, le beirt scoilari a bhi ag obair ag laotharlann NuaLo, 2035.

the cells that were used to create the entire faun genome come from a woman named Henrietta Lacks, who's cancer cells became the first human cells to survive and reproduce outside of the body, and are still used to this day. below is a picture of the first ever live bloodletter from 2005 who was named "henry" next to a picture of Henrietta Lacks that's kept in the laboratory, next to two students working for NuaLo, 2035.

While i was in school this was still actively being fought. The audacity of the company to claim it was outside of the statute of limitations WHILE STILL BENEFITTING FROM IT IN THE ORDER OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Which luckily because of previous court precedents was already a null argument specifically because of them actively benefitting

The Lacks family says they may go after other companies that use the cells as well and i think they should

I hate how much of the medical system, not just the US but as a result worldwide. Is built on unremediated racism and many other prejudices that still permeate the medical systems at this very moment

We should all know her name, she’s saved countless lives and advanced research, but her cells were also stolen.