There are rare cases, when society has to make the tough decision to overlook a person's basic rights for the good of the general public, Mary Mallon is one of these exceedingly rare cases. Mary Mallon was a carrier of Typhoid fever, because of this she was denied her way of life and her passion. Typhoid left an abysmal impression on Mary’s life, but she did not let let sickness define who she was. Mary left a lasting mark in her own subtle way, her life was more paramount than meets the eye, she opened the eyes of scientists all over the world and taught the world a near impossible lesson about never giving in.
Mary lived from 1869 to 1938, she was born in Ireland and moved to New York in 1884, when she was 15 years old. Everywhere Mary went,
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She was dubbed ‘Typhoid Mary’, a name she loathed, by various newspapers. “Typhoid Mary” is even defined in the dictionary as “a carrier or transmitter of anything undesirable, harmful, or catastrophic.” To make things worse, Mary was even told that she would never be allowed to cook again. She was not even allowed to prepare a glass of water for a guest that stopped by her house, for fear that she might spread Typhoid to another innocent bystander. The world took her passion away because they were afraid of her. Dr. Sara Josephine Baker is the woman who originally “caught” her and put her into solitary confinement the first time (yes, she was put into solitary confinement more than once). Public health officials came knocking on her door in 1907 and dragged her away to a hospital, without a warrant or any form of warning. Dr. Baker actually had to sit on Mary while on the way to the hospital to restrain her. Dr. Baker wrote in a journal, that the ride to the hospital was “like being in a cage with an angry lion” (Baker, 1). They only spent a brief amount of time at the Willard Parker Hospital after they arrived. She was then dropped off at a one-room flat on North Brother Island (the flat was on the grounds of Riverside Hospital). This was to become her permanent home, but after 3 years of solitary confinement in 1910, she was released on the premise that she would never cook or prepare any sort of food or drink for anyone else ever again, and that she would have to check in with health officials every few months (almost like some she was a prisoner on parole, in her eyes, she was exactly that; a prisoner). Eventually health officials lost track of Mary. Mary Mallon changed her name to Mary Brown (often referred to Mrs. Brown, even though she never married) and continued to work as a cook at Sloane Maternity Hospital before 25 new cases of Typhoid broke out. In 1915 Health officials took Mary back to North Brother Island,
Mary Eugenia Surratt, née Jenkins, was born to Samuel Isaac Jenkins and his wife near Waterloo, Maryland. After her father died when she was young, her mother and older siblings kept the family and the farm together. After attending a Catholic girls’ school for a few years, she met and married John Surratt at age fifteen. They had three children: Isaac, John, and Anna. After a fire at their first farm, John Surratt Sr. began jumping from occupation to occupation.
People trust doctors to save lives. Everyday millions of Americans swallow pills prescribed by doctors to alleviate painful symptoms of conditions they may have. Others entrust their lives to doctors, with full trust that the doctors have the patient’s best interests in mind. In cases such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the Crownsville Hospital of the Negro Insane, and Joseph Mengele’s Research, doctors did not take care of the patients but instead focused on their self-interest. Rebecca Skloot, in her contemporary nonfiction novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, uses logos to reveal corruption in the medical field in order to protect individuals in the future.
Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, depicts the violation of medical ethics from the patient and researcher perspectives specifically when race, poverty, and lack of medical education are factors. The novel takes place in the southern United States in 1951. Henrietta Lacks is born in a poor rural town, Clover, but eventually moves to urban Turner Station. She was diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins hospital where cells was unknowingly taken from her and used for scientific research. Rebecca Skloot describes this when she writes, “But first—though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting sample or asked she wanted to be a donor—Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta's cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish” (33). The simple act of taking cells, which the physicians did not even think twice about, caused decades
The story about Henrietta Lacks is the evidence that the ethics of medical processes need to be improved. For a long time, many patients have been victims of malpractice. Sometimes, the doctors still can do anything without the agreement from patients. Any medical institution needs to hold the integrity on any consent form that is signed by a patient. To summarize, the story of Henrietta Lacks could be the way to improve the standardization and equality of medical institutions in the future.
Before reading this book, I had never heard of Henrietta Lacks or HeLa. I found her story very interesting. Personally, I was unaware that discrimination was still such a big issue in the 1950s and that informed consent did not yet exist in this time period. The book is very well written and also understandable for people who don’t have a background in science. The story of Henrietta is fascinating and I would recommend anyone to read it.
For all the advancements and modernity of the contemporary world that has been provided by capitalist institutions it is without a doubt that this progress has come at the cost of dehumanization, inequity, exploitation, and oppression. The story of Henrietta Lacks and her cells is teeming with these elements from the unethical extraction of her cells to the rich industry built around their production and derived products. The resurgence of Marxism in the social sciences provides critical insight into the operations of these institutions within society. The individuals who have profited from the sale, derived products, and research have eluded reciprocity from those who provided the means to do so.
Before she could get her little shop going a fire burnt down her business and her house with all of her belongings in 1871. Mary was having an awful time but managed to keep on trying. She finally got a job working with people who wanted to get decent wages and have their working environment improved. She also tried to stop child labor. Her work involved making speeches, recruiting members and organizing soup kitchens and women's auxiliary groups during strikes.
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. She was an only child, and her parents were deeply religious Roman Catholics. She was educated at the Women’s College of Georgia and the State University of Iowa. While she was at college, she wrote short stories which were published. During this time her father died of lupus, a blood disease that would eventually claim her life as well. After she was diagnosed, she moved to Milledgville, Georgia, for treatment of the disease. She continued writing and published two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear it Away, as well as two collections of short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge. She died from Lupus in 1964 (Charters, 1079).
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925 into one of the oldest and most prominent Catholic families in Georgia. She was the only child of Edward, a real estate appraiser, and Regina O’Connor. The year after the family moved to Milledgeville in 1940, Flannery’s father contracted and died of lupus. She and her father had always had a close relationship, and 15-year-old Flannery was devastated (Gordon). Catholicism was always a huge aspect of life for the O’Connor family, living across the street from a cathedral and growing up in the Bible Belt (Liukkonen). Flannery attended parochial schools until entering the Georgia State College for Women, where she entered into an accelerated three-year program as a day student (Gordon). She graduated with a Social Sciences degree in 1945 and left Milledgeville for the State University of Iowa where she had been accepted in Paul Engle’s prestigious Writers Workshop. (“Flannery O’Connor”). Flannery devoted herself to what she loved most, writing, though she spent a great deal of her youth drawing pictures for a career as a cartoonist (Liukkonen). It was at this ...
Mary Cassatt had a wonderful childhood filled with travel and a good education. Mary Stevenson Cassatt was born in Allegheny Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh on May 22, 1885 (Encyclopedia of World Biography 2). She was one of seven children, two of which did not make it past infancy (Creative Commons License 3). Her childhood was spent moving throughout Germany and France, (Creative Commons License 4) until her family moved back to Pennsylvania, then continued moving eastward to Lancaster and then to Philadelphia (Creative Commons License 3), where Cassatt started school at age six (Creative Commons License 3). Then continued her schooling at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in
Mary Wollstonecraft lived with a violet and abusive father which led her to taking care of her mom and sister at an early age. Fanny Blood played an important role in her life to opening her to new ideas of how she actually sees things. Mary opened a school with her sister Eliza and their friend Fanny Blood. Back then for them being a teacher made them earn a living during that time, this made her determined to not rely on men again. Mary felt as if having a job where she gets paid for doing something that back then was considered respected than she wouldn’t need a man to be giving her money. She wasn’t only a women’s right activist but she was a scholar, educator and journalist which led her to writing books about women’s rights.
The African American males was informed by researchers that they were being treated for "bad blood," a local term used to describe several ailments, including syphilis, anemia, and fatigue (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d., para 1). However, the black men did not receive the proper treatment needed to cure their illness, they were betrayed because they felt they had found hope when they were offered free medical care by the United States Public Health Service (CDC, n.d. para. 5). In short, they believe their research were more important and hope that one day that their research would later be viewed utilitarianism because they made the right action in which their study is for the greater number people who will be later will be cured for the sacrifice of the few (Neher, W. W. Sandin, P.J., 2007, p.
The term “justice” has a wide variety of definitions but, in the nursing world it is an ethical principle that is defined as: the equal and fair distribution of resources. No matter who they are, every person has the right to any and all means of medical treatment (ANA, n.d.). In order for justice to be achieved, a patient should be given fair, impartial care and having their rights as a citizens upheld (Feinsod & Wagner, 2008). Although the in knowledge of AIDS and its disease processes have grown exponentially over the decades, there are still cases of discrimination against those infected with the disease.
International public health policies attempt to reform the social and political systems which influence the health and safety of all citizens of the world. In the past, these policies have been created through the strong reliance on and exploitation of socially constructed systems of classification such as gender, sexuality, nationality, and economic class. It has been a system of correlation between the behaviors which seem prevalent within social groupings and chances that those behaviors will lead to disease transmition or infestation. In January 2004, the World Health Organization announced a radical change in their policies surrounding public health study and prevention in the 2004 World Report on violence and health. Instead of focusing on larger global and national trends, the WHO called for an expansion of policies and increase of resources which focused more on the experiences and support of individuals rather than groups. This value of individual experience holds extreme promise in the expansion and effectiveness of public health initiatives as well has changes many societal systems of classifications. However, there may be detrimental effects of this change that exploit the very subjects that they attempt to help. It is a question of forcing the private experience of disease into a public domain. Where are the lines of public verses private drawn?
What started as a problem with a horrific disease, lead to isolation of leprosy patients. It was hard for these patients to settle and make homes; communities feared the spreading of illness. The government took an old plantation to create a hospital for the leprosy patients. The old plantation was called hospital #66 or better known as Carville. “Over a long time period, the disease can be disfiguring, and societies have stigmatized victims of the disease. This attribute is deeply discrediting since the stigmatized individual is disqualified from full social acceptance. Leprosy was thus dreaded, not because it killed, but because it left one alive with no hope”. (P1. And 2, Sato, H., & Frantz, J. (2005). Termination of the leprosy isolation policy in the US and japan: Science, policy changes, and the garbage can model.) People deemed with this Disease were brought to Carville mandatory to be quarantined; some patients were brought in shackles against there will. Patients were forced to leave everything they knew and loved behind, including friends, family and children.