Category: McCoy 101 Fall 2019

To wrap up my posts for the semester and expand my thoughts beyond the classroom I will highlight how Colson Whitehead’s Zone One spoke to me in a way I had never experienced before. His at times frustrating text evoked emotions in me that sparked connections to the many victims of racism shown in a video of  the African Burial Ground National Monument.

As I read through Whitehead’s Zone One I found myself feeling frustrated throughout the book and struggling to distinguish flashback moments from reality. For instance Whitehead writes, “He and his friend Kyle had spent a few nights in Atlantic City at one of the new boutique casinos, adrift among the dazzling surfaces. Inside the enclosure, they imagined themselves libertines at the trough, snout-deep and rooting.” It was moments like these where I would flip back through the pages to try and find a starting point and regain my sense of reality in the text. Having to constantly search for these answers and most of the time still remaining confused was extremely frustrating for me. I didn’t possess the complex skills required to grasp his words into understanding. This however, was not the only challenge I faced. The vocabulary at times was not only tough for me but having to stop and look up the words online left me having to pick up where I left off about 5 minutes after stopping and exacerbated my previous problem of distinguishing reality from flashback. Whitehead used words such as “sommelier,” “ennobled,” and “homunculi” which were only a few out of the many that left me feeling clueless. I started putting down the book in frustration and giving up because it was easier than reading one page every ten minutes. 

It wasn’t until I watched a walkthrough video of the African Burial Ground National Monument that I realized how important Whitehead’s Zone One really was as I navigated this class. During the video, the descriptions of the various people who were buried there was listed in a circular pattern on the ground. All that could be included were the ages, genders, and cultural background of the bodies laid to rest. The absence of names and life stories left me feeling frustrated for the families of these people. Not only did racism ultimately force these bodies to reside here, unknown to their loved ones, but now it was impossible to identify their lineage. How frustrated those family members must feel that they can’t trace back their family line because someone decided their life wasn’t worth remembering. I quickly realized how selfish I was to feel such frustration over not being able to track the story line in Whitehead’s Zone One when I had the opportunity to trace back my entire bloodline.  

I had taken for granted something that contributed so much to my identity growing up. In my family we have access to a whole bookshelf full of photos and memories and stories tracing back my family bloodline almost 400 years. Reading these books as a kid were some of my fondest memories that I share with my grandparents who used them to teach me our values and the hard work that went into immigrating from Italy to the United States. I can’t imagine not having access to this type of information and how devastating to have a loved one potentially buried at this site without even being aware of it. I realized that racism can never truly diminish and the damage that has been done will leave lasting effects for generations. These names can never be uncovered, and their families must carry on without their memory or being able to contribute their respective burial practices. 

Whitehead has not only made me appreciate all that I have, but has helped me empathize with those who can never have access to this luxury I grew up learning from. I hope to teach my children the importance and value of our family tree and how many don’t have this abundance of access to it as we do.  This class has taught me more about myself sometimes, than the actual history of racism and medicine and I am eternally grateful for the person I am walking away from it as. 

What is consent? Consent is something we give in our everyday lives. From doctors’ offices to sex to even college, we are always giving, or withholding consent. Merriam-Webster defines consent in two ways. 1. The verb, “to give assent or approval: agree”, and 2. The noun, “compliance in or approval of what is done or being proposed by another”. When we go to the doctors’ office we have forms we have to sign, but do we know what is actually on them? Sure they tell us in a quick sentence what it’s about but do we really know? The truth is, we don’t. We blindly sign our medical forms and go on with getting our treatment. 

Today we are lucky enough to be given the option to give out consent. But in order for us to give out consent, we have to know what we are consenting to and we have to be given that chance. In our medical history, not everyone was given the chance to consent to what was happening to them. Many African Americans throughout history had medical experiments done on them without their knowledge. Many of these people just thought they were being cared for.

One specific instance of this can be seen in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. In this study, they promised that they would give free healthcare to about 600 people in Macon County, Alabama if they were to be infected (Washington, 157). They wanted to see the effects of syphilis in untreated African American men and believed that the disease impacted blacks differently than whites. These men did not know they were being studied and believed they were being treated when treatment was being withheld. The men in these studies were being treated for what was referred to as “bad blood”, which is an umbrella term for things such as anemia, syphilis and muscle aches; there was a group of infected and non-infected men. These men were all grouped together and “treated” with things such as vitamins and aspirins. They believed that they all had the same disease of “bad blood” and saw no harm of being together.

 During the time they thought they were being treated they believed they consented to treatment that would help to cure their syphilis. So what exactly did they consent to? They were lied to and deceived for medical research their whole lives. Not once did these men consent to being in a study nor were they ever alerted they were being studied. For years they believed to have been getting life-changing treatment when in fact their lives were at stake. So that brings us to the question, what do we consent to when we go to the doctors? What do those forms say that we so blindly sign? Are we consenting to medical experiments? There is a chance we will never know until someday someone is curious enough to read those forms we sign.

A recent article in the Democrat and Chronicle discussed a new law about unauthorized immigrants receiving drivers licenses. This is a hot topic because New York will be only 1 of 13 states to pass a law like this. The Green Light Law will allow unauthorized immigrants the ability to apply for a drivers license within the state.

This law is a topic of debate because many people do not agree with it. Many people believe “offices are not equipped to determine the veracity of documents that can soon be submitted to obtain a license.” They think that there will be an influx of people who come in, looking to receive a drivers license and will have fake identification and documents. “”They want to us to make a decision right at the window as to whether something is fraudulent or acceptable,” Rensselaer Clerk Frank Merola said, adding, “I’m not going to make a major mistake.”” People do not want to risk making a mistake about whether the information is correct or not.

This is also a topic of debate because people believe this law would make it easier for undocumented and illegal immigrants to become legal in the US. People believe that “the law requires county clerks to participate in a “state-sponsored scheme” that would, in part, allow immigrants in the country illegally to register to vote in New York, which state officials have said would not be permitted.” They think that these illegal immigrants will do harmful thigs to our government and to people potentially. ” He also said a license would allow undocumented immigrants to drive vehicles that can transport heavy loads. Such vehicles are easily capable of transporting and hiding instruments of mass destruction, and would also facilitate other illicit smuggling activities which are unfortunately on the rise in this country, such as human trafficking and drug trafficking,” Merola’s lawsuit claims.” The law would allow these undocumented immigrants the ability to do more illegal things.

The law can also be a good thing. “This law will boost our state’s economy, improve road safety, and keep families together,” said Javier H. Valdés, co-executive director at Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group.” The roads will be safer and more people will be safe and prosperous than if these immigrants continue to go without drivers licenses. The new drivers also go through driving courses and have to pass the test to get the license still. This would put more safe drivers on the roads.

The new Green Light Law is set to be passed on December 14th. Once the law passes there will most likely be an influx of people at the DMV’s looking to get a license. The law has court cases against it that will lead into 2020, so the law may be repealed.

As I read Zone One, I was able to notice many intricate ways that the author Colson Whitehead used to provide commentary on social issues. In my last blog post, “Let’s Talk About Teeth”, I discussed the role of teeth in both the novel and in a modern context. I also shared what I believed to be Whitehead’s underlying purpose behind his words. Throughout the course, I have been training my ability to notice. I was able to notice numerous instances where Whitehead hinted at social issues and provided his opinion without openly stating it.  However, there was one concept that I found difficult to unpack and was forced to dig deeper in order to understand Whitehead’s purpose. The naming of Zone One’s main character, Mark Spitz.

Mark Spitz is the name Whitehead gave to his main character. This was not the character’s real name but an ironic nickname given to him by other characters in the novel. He received this nickname when Richie, the Quiet Storm and he were in danger of being overrun by a group of skels on a bridge. Realizing that they were unlikely to overcome the massive group of infected, Richie and the Quiet Strom jumped from the bridge into the river below, escaping what they believed to be certain death. Mark Spitz didn’t move. Instead, “he leaped to the hood of the late model neo-station wagon and started firing.” After remarkably taking down all of the skels, he informed his companions that he could not swim. From then on he would be known as Mark Spitz.

I did not immediately recognize the name Mark Spitz, which may be an unfortunate consequence of being a member of my young generation. Luckily to make up for it, my generation has access to an incredible tool, Google. According to his Team USA Hall of Fame Biography, Mark Spitz was an 11-time Olympic medalist swimmer. Spitz throughout is career set 33 world records and won 9 gold medals at the Olympics. His crowning achievement as noted in his Hall of Fame bio was “in Munich, where he dominated, becoming the first athlete to win seven gold medals in seven events, all in world record time.” Spitz was a dominant athlete, who is considered to be one of the greatest swimmers of all time and achieved massive fame and recognition for his abilities in the pool.

The nickname Mark Spitz may seem entirely ironic, but is also fitting for the character in Zone One. Before the Last Night, Mark Spitz was described through a proposed superlative as “Most Likely Not to Be Named Anything most likely.” He was average, a B-student who was unremarkable until he found the one thing he was truly exceptional at, surviving. This is fitting because the Olympic Swimmer Mark Spitz shared a similar story. In an article authored by Scott Stump for Today, Spitz is quoted as saying “I’ve always thought of myself as a regular guy, and I happened to do something extraordinary in the journey of my athletic career.” Both the fictional character and his namesake were regular people that became special under the right circumstances. Whitehead supports that the new situation benefits his character by stating, “Now the world was mediocre rendering him perfect.”

On the surface, it may look like Whitehead gave his main character the name Mark Spitz as a comedic mocking of the character’s inability to swim. Although the name has a far greater meaning. The Olympian swimmer Spitz was nearly impossible to defeat in competition. Mark Spitz is also impossible to defeat in Whitehead’s post-apocalyptic world. Mark Spitz is seemingly invincible, “He had suspicions, and every day in this wasteland supplied more evidence: He could not die.” How can a single man, in a world full of constant danger and overwhelming amounts of death, be impossible to kill? It is my interpretation that the character doesn’t represent a man, but Mark Spitz is an idea. An idea cannot be killed or destroyed. An idea cannot be defeated much like the Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz. There is power in an idea and it lasts longer than those who believe it. Mark Spitz probably should have died several times throughout the story, but somehow escapes with his life every time, supporting the claim that he represents an intangible concept.

I believe that Whitehead wrote this story to create an analogy for the resistance against social injustice. This idea came to me when Whitehead quietly slides racism into the story. After Gary is bitten, Mark Spitz explains how he earned his nickname and then adds, “Plus the black-people-can’t-swim thing.” Revealed as an African-American character, Mark Spitz uses this conversationally to provide some humor in Gary’s last moments, but I believe Whitehead is cluing readers into his underlying message. The infected skels and stragglers represent social injustice, discrimination, and racism. The world is contaminated with racist ideas and discriminatory practices, like Whitehead’s world is infected by zombies. Inaccurate racial assumptions can spread much like a disease. Misinformation, when spread, can become powerful and difficult to overcome. Whitehead is showing his readers the dangers of what could happen when prejudiced ideas grow beyond control.

In addition, Whitehead’s message includes a beacon of hope. In the analogy, Mark Spitz represents an idea of hope for a better world. There are people remaining who are fighting back against overwhelming odds even though the future looks bleak. Even when everyone around him is dying, he survives.  If we continue to be diligent in our fight against social injustice, even when setbacks occur, we cannot be silenced. Whitehead uses the final scene of the novel as a call to action. Mark Spitz is alone, cornered and doesn’t like his probability of ever finding success, “No, he didn’t like his chances at all.” Whitehead encourages us to “swim” against the tide, and to combat against society’s flawed values. Like Mark Spitz, we all need to step out of the door and continue the fight because a better world is possible. After all, we all “have to learn to swim sometime.”

Almost everyone who has been on any social media platform in the last two years has seen or heard the words “My body, my choice”. For those who haven’t heard it, it is the pro-choice movement that has recently surfaced with the talk of defunding Planned Parent-hood. The whole idea behind this movement is that you should be able to choose what you want to happen to your body, and no one else can tell you what to do with it. In the case of this movement, it deals with the ideas of whether a woman should be able to get an abortion or not. However, when looking at it in a much less controversial light, the basis of this argument is to let me do whatever the heck I want with MY body. 

In todays time, the younger generations have more freedom than past generations did. We can dress how we want, say what we want and within reason, do what we want. The younger generations are the generations that can change the future for the better, and we can see them trying with each new movement that pops up. 

When I think of “My body, my choice” I think of the ability to be able to do what I want with my body because I have control over my body and what happens to it. For many of us, this is true, but for African Americans, it was not always the case. In Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington writes of many accounts where African Americans had no say over what happened to their bodies. Medical experiments were done on them when they were alive, and their dead bodies were awarded to medical schools for medical research without alerting their families. Washington talks about one man named Cade who went to the hospital for severe injuries that caused doctors to believe he would not make it through the night. Cade was able to get better within a few days but unbeknownst to him, his doctors were under contract with the AEC (216). Without being given a choice, he was injected with plutonium. After this, he was kept in the hospital for six months after this where they pulled his teeth and took bone samples to see the effects of the plutonium. While Cade did go on to live a happy and healthy life, he did not get to choose what happened to his body. His ability to choose was taken away the minute they chose to not inform him of what was happening. 

Cade was never given the option to choose what happened to him, he was never given any options. Not only is this taking away his right to choose, but it is also dehumanizing. Human beings should be able to choose and give their consent before medical procedures are done to them and this was something never available to Cade. Because they needed to find out the effects of plutonium on the human body they used Cade as a vehicle for medical research taking away his choice to choose to allow this to happen or not. 

With the “My body, my choice” movement that has recently surfaced, supporters believed that they should get to choose what happens to their body. This is a theme that sits with me as everyone, should be able to get the options to choose what happens with their bodies. 

Recently there was an article on the US News website that discussed informed consent before heart procedures. The article discussed whether or not informed consent actually worked or not.

The article discussed the effectiveness of informed consent. “More than 40% of the patients said they did not understand or remember the information received as part of informed consent. About 60% of those with coronary artery disease thought PCI would cure the disease, nearly 95% believed it would reduce their risk of a future heart attack, and 91% thought it would help them live longer, according to the study published Nov. 28 in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.” Many people do not understand or remember what they are told before the procedure, this makes informed consent ineffective because they should know what is going to be happening to them and what the consequences of the procedure will be, before giving consent.

Patients also receive the information in one large statement and then they do not remember what was said, they need to have the information broken up so they can process and remember the information presented to them. “Cardiologists and nurses should be trained to provide small bits of information and then ask patients to explain it in their own words to see how much they’ve understood, she suggested.” Those who present the information should give it in smaller and easier to process bits, so all patients can understand it.

If patients are not understanding what they are being told about the procedures they are going to undergo, can they really be considered informed, and can they truly give consent? They come out of these procedures with unrealistic expectations and then are confused when the outcome is not what they expected. This is why the information these patients are receiving should be in easy to understand bits and not one large chunk. Doctors should not be giving patients such difficult to comprehend information.

Denial or ignorance? That’s the question. Whether people leave out information when teaching purposefully because they don’t want to accept it, or if it’s because they never learned it themselves. There has been a huge gap in all my biology classes that I have neglected to realize until Washington’s Medical Apartheid began to fill it. A gap full of neglect, suffering, and oppression that has left people without their lives so the rest of us could have the knowledge gained from their mistreatment. 

Washington highlights the gruesome past of medicine and how the basis of human anatomy that is taught in classrooms today was first explored. Washington states, “Treatment was administered to blacks on the charity wards, but care was always secondary to practice, because the main purpose of the clinic was instruction, training, and experimentation for the physicians and students. Treatment took place without consent, often via unpleasant draconian measures.” Most of the information in my textbooks, I quickly realized, was based off cruel practices like this and I had no idea. Had my teachers purposefully left it out to be able to finish all the other material necessary for the course or had their professors never taught them about this history as well. Either way somewhere along the timeline people made the decisions to keep this out of the curriculum leaving biology majors like myself in absolute awe upon its discovery and with a new responsibility to make it right. Washington goes on to say, “the surgeon told his students flatly that the decision to amputate should be weighed differently according to the person’s race and class… although such an extreme remedy is a horrid deformity that should be the last resort for a white man, amputating the limb of a slave was a matter of comparatively little importance.” This was for me, the scariest history Washington brought to light because it can still be easily done today based upon how the doctor views his patient and decides what types of procedures they deserve. This statement made real for me what many people may be feeling before going to the doctor, and the genuine fear of them being a victim of this dehumanization.   

Upon entering my English 101 class we went through the extensively long syllabus that quite frankly struggled to keep my attention. It was not until my professor Beth McCoy had stressed the importance of complete informed consent that I began to appreciate the length of the syllabus. This moment had always remained in the back of my head as she gave us the option to remove ourselves from the class if we so please. Although I always knew this was an option in my other classes as well, my other professors had never encouraged it before. I felt free in my decision to remain in the class and accept the responsibilities that came along with it. As the semester moved along and Washington’s words revealed the long, dark, and twisted path that trailed behind in the history of the medical profession I began to question my identity. Is this something I would be promoting as a dentist? Am I contributing to the problem by entering this field and participating in the biology major? I was scared and wondered why I was never given a long extensive consent form for this major before I agreed to do it. I wasn’t given complete consent as Beth McCoy had provided to our class and it was too late. I had agreed to something I didn’t bother to look into and now I have to pay for it (literally). 

This happens more often than we realize. Some common examples for me consist of quickly filling out forms at the doctors, signing up for gym memberships, or signing a lease for an off-campus property at college. All things I have done without reading them over because I trusted that if others were doing it, I’d be safe as well. I without knowing it, now have a responsibility to spread the knowledge that this class and Washington’s Medical Apartheid has provided me in order to inform others of the field they are entering and give them the same understanding I now have of patient’s unwillingness to be treated. The medical community has a huge responsibility to provide trust back with its patients who fear being mistreated, and for good reason. When the lives and humanity of some groups have been consistently valued more than others, those undervalued groups are not going to put their lives in the hands of others unless absolutely necessary. This is a huge boundary to overcome to provide access to healthcare to all patients and should be a topic of discussion upon entering any type of medical profession. Without this knowledge the problem will never be repaired, and people will neglect medicine when they need it most out of fear.

Consent is the foundation of ethicality but at what point is it our responsibility to go out and inform ourselves versus someone handing us a lengthy consent form before everything we do? If you don’t take the time to completely inform yourself whether it’s through research or reading a pre-made consent form, you must be ready to accept the types of responsibilities you will be left with as a result. So, doctors, now that we’ve all given consent, where do we start?  

6 years ago I had the (unfortunate) opportunity to get braces. I had wickedly awful looking teeth and I refused to smile because of how awful they were. Thankfully I had health and dental insurance to cover part of the *very expensive* cost of my braces. Today I am able to smile proudly with perfectly straight teeth!

My mom recently got her wisdom teeth out and only had to pay $50 because her insurance covered the rest. If I ever have a toothache or need a check-up it is as simple as calling and making an appointment. Not everyone is as fortunate as my family and I are to be able to pay so little for dental care. After reading the article The Painful Truth about Teeth by Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan I realized just how lucky I am and how privileged I am. 

In Maryland, hundreds of people waited in the cold for dental care. A lot of these people held steady jobs but were just unable to afford the cost of dental care. Dee Matello owns a small business with her husband and back in 2016 she and her husband both voted for Trump because he vowed to be the voice of the working class of America. Matello hasn’t received dental care, and for years she has had an ache in her back molar making it almost impossible to chew on that side of her mouth. 

Many of the people that showed up for this clinic had a steady paying job but did not have the dental insurance or the extra cash to make it to the dentist. Why is something as simple as the dentist so expensive and unreachable for so many working-class Americans?

The divide between the rich and the poor is something that keeps on growing, and now it is having detrimental effects on peoples lives. The working-class in America can no longer go to the dentist or doctor without breaking the bank. While the well off people are able to drop $2,000 on a single tooth, the working class has to save up, or wait until it is a dire emergency to get their tooth fixed. 

A study done by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported by NPR sent out a survey asking Americans about their overall health and the results were quite fascinating. The health of Americans was declining and gender, race, and income played a big part. What this study showed was that white men with a higher income had the best health. While this is unfortunately not surprising, it is quite frustrating to think about. 

For thousands of years, there has been a divide between the upper and lower class. Upper class has always had the ability to own land, and generally had more rights than the lower class did. Not only was there a class divide but there was also a race divide. 

In Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington, the first chapter discusses the medical exploitation of blacks. Washington talks about how slaves were often used as vehicles for medical research and that slaves often couldn’t get the same medical care because of their work conditions (Washington, 29). Just as the working class in America today, healthcare was difficult to come by and often not an avenue taken unless it was a dire emergency. The sixth chapter goes into the idea that just because there was an end to slavery it did not mean there was an end in the scientific racism that was happening (145), there was no equality between whites and blacks in the medical field. They had a poor and unreliable medical system. 

I made the connection between Washington and the article we read for class because of just how unfair our healthcare can be. Working people can not afford something as simple as getting a tooth pulled, and the blacks were unable to get just healthcare because in both cases an unreliable healthcare system is in place. While these are not even close to the same magnitude, it serves to show that for years people and races have been unfairly discriminated against and their health has suffered because of this.