Overdue

[_jeremiad]

I wanna do a rant about the HeLa cells and how they were stolen from a black woman's body during the 50's and have since been used a fuckton of research (even winning 5 Nobel prizes and who knows how many billions of dollars) and nobody has even bothered to ever compensate the family for their contribution

Comments

[virginia_fell]

*face in hands* Damn.

An awful thing is, when I heard about this for the first time years back, I didn't know how to think about Stuff in general, and it never occurred to me that she wouldn't have been some kind of enthused willing participant in Doing Science. Then, today, I check Wikipedia all over again, and find this:

"Then, as now, there was no requirement to inform a patient, or their relatives, about such matters because discarded material, or material obtained during surgery, diagnosis or therapy, was the property of the physician and/or medical institution."

What the FUCK. My God. Yet another wonderful "finders keepers, even if it's someone's body" instance of horrible fuckery.

Thank you for posting this. I... get this situation far better now than I did before you said something.

[purpleranger]

Why should the family be compensated? After all, the woman was merely the source of the cells, and not anyone important, like the doctors, researchers, or anyone else who actually did something with those cells.

Okay, that was sarcasm, BTW. I'm not sure how well it will come across if you don't hear it with the proper inflection.

sorry for being so late

[blaquerose19]

I completely agree.....is there any way her family can try and sue I mean that's totally wrong I can't even say how wrong.