{"id":176451283,"date":"2015-03-09T01:24:34","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T06:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/?p=176451283"},"modified":"2015-03-09T01:24:34","modified_gmt":"2015-03-09T06:24:34","slug":"history-audio-the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/2015\/03\/09\/history-audio-the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks\/","title":{"rendered":"HISTORY + AUDIO: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/cbc-player.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-176451284\" src=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/cbc-player.jpg\" alt=\"cbc player\" width=\"243\" height=\"55\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Aug 9, 2013<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1><a href=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Henrietta-Lacks-02.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-176451289\" src=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Henrietta-Lacks-02-673x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Henrietta Lacks 02\" width=\"673\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Henrietta-Lacks-02-673x1024.jpg 673w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Henrietta-Lacks-02-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Henrietta-Lacks-02-920x1401.jpg 920w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Henrietta-Lacks-02.jpg 1872w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 673px) 100vw, 673px\" \/><\/a><\/h1>\n<h1><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 36pt;\">The Immortal Life <\/span><\/h1>\n<h1><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 36pt;\">of Henrietta Lacks<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/i\/caffeine\/syndicate\/?clipId=2400111626\" width=\"620\" height=\"348\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\u00a0<\/span><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">Henrietta Lacks was a poor, sick, American. But her body&#8217;s cells have proven to be rich and have paved the way to many medical therapies. Author of &#8220;The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks\u201d, shares her story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&gt;via:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/player\/Radio\/The+Current\/ID\/2400111626\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/player\/Radio\/The+Current\/ID\/2400111626\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 18pt;\"><strong>__________________________\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/for-harriet.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-176451287\" src=\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/for-harriet.png\" alt=\"for harriet\" width=\"351\" height=\"91\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/for-harriet.png 351w, https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/for-harriet-300x78.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 351px) 100vw, 351px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Saturday, March 07, 2015<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"post-title entry-title\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 36pt;\">No Name, No Patent:<\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 class=\"post-title entry-title\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 36pt;\"> Acknowledging <\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 class=\"post-title entry-title\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 36pt;\">the Black Women that<\/span><\/h1>\n<h1 class=\"post-title entry-title\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 36pt;\"> Science Has Exploited\u00a0<\/span><\/h1>\n<div id=\"post-body-2630557959753398011\" class=\"post-body entry-content\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-loRwRlZ9KSo%2FVPopmLspSmI%2FAAAAAAAABx0%2FSUm3s7MvHrU%2Fs1600%2Fhenrietta.jpg&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\n<b><\/b><\/div>\n<div class=\"post-body entry-content\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"post-body entry-content\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\"><b><br \/>\n<\/b><strong><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">by Saaraa Bailey<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"post-body entry-content\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\"><br \/>\nThere is perhaps no greater time to consider the intersectionality of blackness and womanhood, than the transition from Black History Month to Women\u2019s History Month.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\"> <a style=\"color: #000000;\" name=\"more\"><\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\"> It is essential that contemporary Black women sing the praises of our sisters and the legacies of our ancestors throughout the whole year, but it seems most important during the months of February and March, when our gifts and contributions are often ignored.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">\u00a0As a graduate student, I first learned about about Henrietta Lacks in a course that focused on special topics within social change. Through the non-fiction work,\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1400052181\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1400052181&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=forhar-20&amp;linkId=MRPWOPZTE3QASKDB\">The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=forhar-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1400052181\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" \/>, author Rebecca Skloot discusses Lacks\u2019 short life with the man she had loved since she was 14 and their five children\u2014who were robbed of her presence\u2014when she died of cervical cancer. The book goes on to detail how cells taken from Lacks before her death would lead to major post-mortem contributions to biology and medical research, of which her family was unaware for decades.Readers are issued a graphic image of Lacks as she lay a cold corpse with chipped red nail polish and looked as if she \u201cwere filled with pearls,\u201d describing the cancerous cells that had began in her cervix and spread throughout her body.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">This image jumped off the page and cemented itself into my memory. The exploitation of this young, working-class black woman stirred a familiar medley of anger and hurt within me, as I thought of my paternal grandmother.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">Somewhat older than Henrietta Lacks\u2019 31 years, but still young enough, my grandmother was 47 when she died. Her death would come two months after a seizure would land her in the hospital. Relaying the story years later, my father would recall how he smelled liquor on the breath of the EMT who came to pick his mother up. My father\u2019s journey to the hospital was polluted with fear, shock, and the lonesome feeling of being the sole person who saw value in the black body stretched out on the gurney.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">After diagnosing my grandmother with a brain tumor, doctors told my father that if they did not operate, she would be a &#8220;vegetable.&#8221; Hopeful that surgery would improve her quality of life, he obliged. Choosing what seemed to be the lesser of two evils, my father opted for surgery that stripped his mother of her hair, but ultimately revived her motor skills. She was still unable to speak, but my grandmother wrote letters to communicate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">A few weeks later my grandmother was taken back into surgery. This time, the results would not be good. When she returned from her second operation, my grandmother was not only incapable of speaking, but she had also lost all motor function and could do nothing more than just lay in her hospital bed. She was, and would remain, unresponsive until her death.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">Something had gone horribly wrong during the second operation, but no one was answering any questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">When visiting, my father would often come to find his mother\u2019s head bandage unchanged and leaking. And on one occasion, he came to visit and her gown was wide open, as she lay in the hospital bed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">On a beautiful spring afternoon, 27 days after his eighteenth birthday, my father returned home from school to discover that my grandmother had died. When she was buried, my grandmother wore a blue dress that mirrored the grief which hovered over my father, now a motherless young man.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">Questions still linger about the doctor\u2019s decision to operate a second time on a woman who appeared to be doing well. No explanations were ever given as to why she returned in an irreversible vegetative state. While my family never got answers, we can assume that the mistakes they made during my grandmother\u2019s second procedure taught the surgeons of what not to do next time. My dad lost his mother, so someone else down the line could keep theirs. I missed out on meeting my grandmother, so some other girl could have an enviable relationship with hers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">To the hospital, she was most likely viewed as nothing more than a source for experimentation. She was a body to be tampered with. But to those who knew her, she was a beloved mother and friend, a source of light in a dark world of poverty, greed, and selfishness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">While their status as working class black women in the early to mid-1900s led to their humility and grace, it also made both my grandmother and Ms. Lacks ideal candidates for medical experimentation. Like Ms. Lacks, my grandmother was young, poor, black, and female. Also, like Ms. Lacks, my grandmother had a terminal illness. This added vulnerability on top of the social oppressions they experienced, and what the doctors deemed as their inevitable deaths, made them both susceptible to exploitation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">No patent, no name, no life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">Like Henrietta Lacks, my grandmother was prematurely freed from the chains of a black body and the broken promises of life in a world that was both unkind to her and largely undeserving of her value.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">As women of the African Diaspora, we all suffer and sacrifice. Had any of us been born a few decades earlier, we could have easily been in the same positions as my grandmother or Henrietta Lacks: our bodies once again abused and exploited for \u201cthe greater good.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">There is the old adage that defines character as what you do if no one were to discover your deeds. As black women, we may not have a patent or a name on the seal (despite the acknowledgment owed to us), but we will always have our strong and persevering character.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">So it is through this bridging of Black and Women\u2019s history that I hold a candle to the gifts of my grandmother and women like her, the inaudible yet invaluable crafters of all that we owe so much to.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\">Thank you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Photo: Henrietta Lacks<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>++++++++++<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;\"><i><strong>Saaraa Bailey<\/strong> is a regular contributor to For Harriet.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&gt;via:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forharriet.com\/2015\/03\/no-name-no-patent-acknowledging-black.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.forharriet.com\/2015\/03\/no-name-no-patent-acknowledging-black.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Aug 9, 2013 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks \u00a0 Henrietta Lacks was a poor, sick, American. But her body&#8217;s cells have proven to be rich and have paved the way to many medical therapies. Author of &#8220;The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks\u201d, shares her story. &nbsp; &gt;via:\u00a0http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/player\/Radio\/The+Current\/ID\/2400111626\/ __________________________\u00a0 &nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[6],"tags":[4,12,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176451283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176451283"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176451283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176451293,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176451283\/revisions\/176451293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176451283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176451283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176451283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}