Rebecca Skloot Unethical

What exactly is ethical behavior when it comes to human experimentation? Nowadays, people would claim it has to be honest, fair, safe, and humane. However, that criteria had not prevailed through all of history. Early on, scientists often used questionable techniques to obtain research because ethics would not be an important issue until well into the 20th century. In her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot uses tone and diction to illustrate the historical evolution of the ethics surrounding human experimentation.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, researchers did not consider ethics when using minorities in research. For example, doctors tested drugs and new surgical techniques on slaves. The doctors did not even use

anesthesia, let alone ask for permission. Also, in the early 1900s, researchers exhumed black corpses for experimentation without familial consent. Northern schools bought black bodies for anatomy courses through an underground shipping industry. Back then, these actions were considered fine because people were more concerned with discovery rather than ethics. Ethics would not be an issue for decades to come. Rebecca Skloot presents these details in a reportorial, unbiased tone. She says the “corpses were routinely exhumed from graves,” not showing any resentment or even support towards the doctors. Had she wanted to have a more angry and passionate tone, she could have used different diction, like “carcasses were unjustly ripped from tombs.” Skloot is not trying to push her agenda so readers can better evaluate the information she’s presenting and make a decision for themselves.
By the 1930s, not much debate had been stirred about unethical experimentation of minorities.

Starting from that decade, the U.S. Public Health Service researchers at the Tuskegee Institute recruited black men with syphilis to study how their disease killed people. The researchers watched each man die, even after realizing penicillin could cure him. They chose black subjects specifically because they, along with many other white people, believed black people were “notoriously syphilis-soaked.” The researchers, and the public at the time, did not care about the deaths of a so-called racially inferior group. All the scientists gave to the families of those who died was a fifty-dollar stipend. Here Rebecca Skloot’s tone is more indignant. She chooses to describe the black men’s deaths as slow, painful, and preventable. She is clearly upset at the researchers’ flippant carelessness with black lives and wants the reader to understand the injustice of their actions. Also in the 1930s, in what was called the Mississippi Appendectomies, hysterectomies were performed involuntarily on poor black women. Doctors wanted to practice and to sterilize the women. Again, Skloot’s tone is upset. She uses the word choice of “unnecessary” to enforce that the doctors were not even trying to treat the women. The reason her tone might have been more passionate was because these experiments were part of a conversation she had with Roland Pattillo. She wanted to impress him so he would put her in touch with the Lacks family. A more emotional response was needed to show how much she cared about the wrongdoings black people

endured.
In the 1950s, the discussion of ethics still had not risen. During this era, patients going to public wards would unknowingly be used in research. Doctors believed that since they received free treatment, taking part in experiments would be their payment. In 1954, Chester M. Southam injected about a dozen cancer patients with HeLa, which were malignant cells. Tumors began to grow on the injection site for all the patients. In one, the HeLa cells even metastasized to her lymph nodes. Southam only told them that he was testing their immune system. Two years later, he performed the same experiment on prisoners. This time, he told the subject they were there for cancer research, but did not explain further or attempt to gain informed consent. Also in the 1950s, Crownsville State Hospital, formerly known as the Hospital for the Negro Insane, conducted research on patients without consent. For example, the staff performed pneumoencephalographies without permission from the patient or the parents. Pneumoencephalography was a technique for taking images of the brain. Doctors drilled holes into subjects’ skulls, drained their brain fluid, and pumped air or helium in instead. This allowed for crisper X-rays. The doctors did not even question if what they were doing was moral. Skloot’s tone is once again formal and explanatory. The neutrality of her tone helps her purpose of educating others about the ethics of human experimentation. She doesn’t want to force readers to feel the same as her; she just wants them to understand and learn.
Finally in the 1960s, ethics started to become a debate. In 1963, Chester Southam and Emanuel Mandel, director of medicine at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital, teamed up to use the hospital’s patients for research. Mandel instructed his staff to give injections containing cancer to patients without their knowledge or consent. Three young Jewish doctors refused because they all knew about the nonconsensual research Nazis did on Jews and other concentration camp prisoners. This research was brought to light through the Nuremburg Trials. In 1947, seven Nazi doctors were sentenced to death by hanging for their experiments. They sewed siblings together and dissected living people. A code of ethics, now known as the Nuremburg Code, was set forth. However, it was never taught in medical schools. Here Skloot’s diction does give away her voice. She described the research as unthinkable and she said Southam “claimed” not to know the Nuremburg code existed. Claimed has a connotation of deception. It shows Southam clearly knew what he was doing, but was playing innocent. Skloot could have used “said” since it has a more neutral implication, but she chose “claimed.” Perhaps this stray from her usual tone is a reflection of her own half-Jewish heritage. In the 1970s and 1980s, ethics became more of an issue. In the 1970s, prisoner experimentation came under heavy scrutiny and started being regulated. Moreover, during that decade the public finally learned about the Tuskegee syphilis studies. The media went crazy. Rumors starting spreading that doctors injected the men with syphilis. People were finally paying attention.
Ethics about human experimentation have changed over time. They came all the way from routinely using slaves as research subjects to injections, sterilizations, and surgeries on unknowing patients to people finally taking a stand. Rebecca Skloot used mostly an unbiased tone to demonstrate this evolution. Now how will ethics transform in the future and what current injustices will eventually be realized and scrutinized?