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The introductions of literary works typically serve to convey a theme or themes and general sense of tone that will be seen throughout the work. Perhaps most bluntly, we are told immediately by Homer what the Iliad will be about: the rage of Achilles and the fulfilling of Zeus’ will. These themes lie at the center of the work and even with Achilles’ scant appearances in the first half of the story, he is frequently referenced by the other characters and one wonders when he’ll emerge from his tent and what he’ll do when he does. The anticipation of Achilles’ appearance throbs like a heartbeat, always beneath the action of the story and the characters’ feelings. Likewise, in Everett’s Zulus, Butler’s Clay’s Ark, and Morrison’s Home, we are very quickly introduced to the sort of worlds the authors place their characters, and each clearly seek to create this sense of a constant presence that may either be very apparent, as in the Iliad, Zulus, and Clay’s Ark¸ or less apparent as in Home.

Butler’s Clay’s Ark can be read as having two introductions. The very first chapter takes place in the past, while the following chapter takes place in the present, with the book shifting between past and present often. Both the past and the present’s first chapters places within our minds the idea of this world that Butler has created being dangerous. In the first chapter, Past 1, the very first sentence: ”The ship had been destroyed five days before” outright suggests violence, that is, destruction. We’re told a brief history of a man we follow, who was unsure of how the ship had been destroyed, how he’d been alone, how he “walked and climbed automatically”, and how he’s only moved by hunger and thirst. He’d hidden himself for five days, with “no goal but food, water, and human companionship.” And he killed animals “with his bare hands or with stones” which he “ate raw, splashing their blood over his ragged coverall, drinking as much of it as he could.” As in the Iliad, we’re told what will figure heavily in this story—instincts and killing. The next chapter, Present 2, further reinforces and adds to the world built in Past 1; we’re briefly introduced to three of the main characters, who are promptly kidnapped—at threat of violence—by another main character. By page 16 and before the next chapter, we’re already well aware that this story will be about violence, and this violence and the threat of this violence is constantly shown throughout later parts of the book in more or less obvious ways. Less obvious ways can be seen in the forceful transmission of a potentially fatal and invariably life-altering disease, in that there is inherently a violence done against a person when they don’t give informed consent but are experimented on anyway. More obvious ways can be seen in the overt physical violence that comes from shootouts, rapes, and a decapitation. The first half of Clay’s Ark focuses mostly on covert violence (in the form of transmitting the disease and kidnapping) and the threat of violence, while the latter half focuses on the more overt violence mentioned before.

Similarly, Everett’s Zulus begins with a violent scene. The protagonist is raped by page 11, and is then abandoned by the rapist who is never to be seen again. Though the rapist’s disappearing from the story makes it possible, even easy, to forget about this opening scene, it nevertheless follows us throughout the entirety of the story, as the plot hinges upon this opening scene having occurred, because it leads the protagonist to believe that she’s pregnant, which serves as motivation for her and almost every other character’s actions. After this initial violence, there are hardly any overtly violent actions committed in the rest of the story. For the most part, the story is quiet with only a threat of violence bubbling beneath. There is a threat of kidnapping, of experimentation, of death. The opening scene portraying extreme violence, therefore, can be interpreted as showing the reader an example of the kind of violences that can be inflicted upon someone in this world, as well as the extremity of that violence. The book doesn’t open with someone being slapped—it opens with someone being betrayed by a guest and raped on the floor. There is a seriousness in this initial action that lends itself to encouraging the reader to take seriously the threats of violence found within.

Similar to Zulus, Morrison’s Home opens with a violent scene that plants its roots within the rest of the story. Two of the main characters, in a past day when they were children, witness horses fighting and the burial of a person’s corpse. Unlike Clay’s Ark, this sort of violence does not find repetition over and over; rather, like Zulus, Home is quiet (barring one major scene) and the threat of violence is more pervasive. Contrary to either of the other two stories, however, the characters of Home, particularly Cee, are blind to much of the danger that surrounds them. Danger which in one important case seems to be wholly unclear without background information that can’t be found within the book. Cee’s time spent aiding the doctor she’s with seems to have no dramatic interest on its own whatsoever, and relies upon knowledge of the history of experimentation on blacks and on women to be used by the reader to project one’s own warnings of the potential danger to Cee onto Cee’s psychology, which is a psychology of naiveté. Regardless of whether or not this is a clever trick by the author or a failure in the novel, it’s clear by the opening scene and later scenes that the characters inhabit a violent and potentially still yet violent world.

The introductions of the three novels can be read with Washington’s Medical Apartheid in mind. The introduction of Medical Apartheid makes the aims of drawing attention to, and awareness of, the historical and contemporary exploitations of blacks and their relationship with medicine and medical communities. Iatrophobia, the fear of doctors or of going to the doctor, informs the rest of the text by providing a solid anchor point from which one can understand the relation of subsequent material. Through this idea of iatrophobia as anchor point, and through the subsequent material, one can see how the three novels relate to Medical Apartheid’s concerns of consent as a broad human right and of consent as a specific medical right. In Zulus the protagonist is raped and afraid that she’ll be experimented upon and that her child will be taken away; in Home we have Cee’s relationship with the doctor subtly suggesting imminent danger; and in Clay’s Ark we have kidnappings, murders, non-consensual transmission of diseases, and so on. The general themes of Medical Apartheid, so clearly laid out in the introduction of that book, therefore provide a useful framework for the reading of the novels, and helps orient the reader to a consistent understanding of the relationships between the various works.

The scientific community has the responsibility of reporting research that benefits society at large. In the ideal world, scientific experiments would hold ethics to be a top priority. The reality is that animals are often used in testing for a variety of desired outcomes. Animal cruelty has been brought to national attention, but not all animals are recognized in these efforts. How we define animals influences what we deem as acceptable for their participation in experiments. 

The parasite, Diplostomum pseudospathaceum, affects larger organisms such as trout and birds. Although it is microscopic, the parasite has a complex life cycle that is marked by its presence in various stages of multiple species. It finds itself in a bird’s excretions, a part of a snail’s diet, and within the skin of a fish. Each species that the parasite infects is notably different from the other, however, the parasitic relationships are common for each animal.

If it’s directly impacting bigger animals, I’d suggest that it should be treated likewise, especially when considering its use in experiments. The experimentation by Nina Hafer, a German parasitologist, seems to believe otherwise. Scientists at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology infected an organism with mature and immature parasites. Hafer’s reasoning is that “ It contributes to showing how many traits and species can be affected by host manipulation, which should make it an important factor in how parasites alter the ecological interactions of their hosts.” The parasites are dangerous to the host organism, yet still used by scientists for their experiment. Even the word “manipulation” suggests that there is a control of one species by another. Humans are often controlling other animals as test subjects. Proponents of animal testing may argue that such acts are necessary for the advancement of science. They argue the need to examine results on other animals before determining its safety for humans.  

In most experiments that utilize animals, the test subject can not consent to the practice. Even if the process is as simple as observing the animal, the lack of consent is unethical. In addition to understanding the parasite, scientists have also conducted studies on the fish that become infected. Preston reports that “researchers simulated a bird attack by making a shadow swoop over the tank, the fish froze – but infected fish resumed swimming sooner than uninfected ones.” The purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate how parasites can minimize a fish’s chance of survival. The fish, however, becomes an unconsenting subject in the act of experimentation. 

The ever-changing scientific world brings us new methods for approaching science every day. Without the numerous experiments by scientists, we wouldn’t be able to survive as a species. The drawback to modern science is the unethical experiments that are inflicted upon other animals. Any animal that is used for science is presupposed to be inferior to humans because they are subject to treatment that wouldn’t be acceptable for fellow humans.

To continue the idea of character development and growth from my last post, we will be analyzing Morrison’s character Cee, a young, and naive woman at the start of the novel “Home”. When Cee’s brother Frank leaves for the war, for the first time in Cee’s life she is left facing the world without her older brother by her side protecting her. As a consequence, Cee finds herself in a life altering situation working as an assistant to a private practice, experiment-oriented doctor. As the reader follows Cee through her time with the job, it is clear off the bat that there is something incredibly wrong with the situation that she is about to insert herself into. However, Cee as a character is entirely oblivious to the red flags as she comes across them, innocent in not knowing the clear malice they foreshadow. This incident circles back to Cee and Franks shared denial and oblivious nature towards malevolent situations, as discussed in my previous post regarding the burial of a murdered man, blanketed with the imagery of horses.

To truly understand Cee, it is important that we delve deeply into chapter four of Morrison’s novel, where we follow Cee through the process of being interviewed and starting at her new job with the doctor. As Cee makes indicative observations, it is painful to watch as she processes these observations incorrectly, failing to recognize them as dangerous. For example, in Cee’s first weeks at the job, she begins to notice different aspects of the house such as the doctor’s extensive library:

“Now she examined the medical books closely, running her finger over some of the titles: Out of Night. Must be a mystery, she thought. Then The Passing of the Great Race, and next to it, Heredity, Race and Society” (Morrison 65).

Each of these books contain ideologies pertaining to white supremacy, and belief in superior genetics; ideologies that inspired Hitler’s “aryan race”. Anyone who is familiar with these texts would be strikingly alarmed by their proud appearance in a library of a home due to the horrifying opinions and studies that the books contain. Additionally, being that Cee is African American, the display of these books should have been perceived as dangerous and hostile. However, Cee is completely unaware of the harsh, racist ideas described in the texts due to her lack of education in the subjects, and instead she views the library as a representation of the doctor’s extensive knowledge. In Harriet Washington’s, Medical Apartheid, she specifically discusses in chapter six the dangers of scientific theory and the influence that it has on public social opinions. This ties in perfectly with Morrison’s Home as we become aware of the books that are present in the doctor’s home. Washington goes into great detail about how these rogue “scientific theories” were being used as justifications for the horrendous mal treatment and prejudice towards individuals based on the man-made construct of race: “But scientific theory was beginning to trump other philosophies. Scientific theories of racial inferiority had strongly informed the entire nation’s medical perception of African Americans as befitted of slavery, if only because few scientists outside the South troubled themselves to investigate” (Washington 145). In Home, the doctor uses Cee’s perceived “race” and social status to justify his experimentation on her all in the name of science. Morrison successfully displays the dangers of perceived “higher intellectual” thought, as many times these studies were heavily opinionated and just looking for any reason to push down non-whites. Washington uses Dr. Josiah Nott as an example, and his scientific paper on his theory about mulattoes and their standing in the social hierarchy: “The Mulatto A Hybrid – Probable Extermination Of The Two Races if Whites And Blacks Are Allowed to Intermarry” (Washington 145).

It is important to recognize that it is not Cee’s fault that she is naive to these warning signs; circumstantially Cee was truly deceived and manipulated into trusting a home that should have been viewed as a hell house. Her deceivers had specifically been looking for poor, young women, like Cee, that would be naive and unaware of the nonconsensual malice that the job entailed. Cee had been strategically interviewed in a manner that displayed her lack of education, making her a perfect candidate for the doctor’s plans: “Did you graduate from high school? No ma’am… Count? Oh, yes. I even worked a cash register one. Honey, that’s not what I asked you. I can count, ma’am. You may not need to…” (Morrison 59-60). Cee is at a complete disadvantage due to her lack of education, something she even recognizes as she states “How small, how useless was her schooling, she thought, and promised herself she would find the time to read about and understand “eugenics.” This was a good safe place she knew…” (Morrison 65). In this statement alone it is evident how deeply her employers have trapped her in their snare, making Cee trust them entirely. The doctor can be viewed as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, and Cee at this moment only sees the docile, gentle sheep (the beautiful home, the good paying job, the benefits), rather than the monstrous truth (the doctor is going to non-consensually experiment on Cee). 

Circling back to Cee’s observations, it is important to note that Cee is cunning enough to recognize the pattern of the type of people who have had this job in the past, yet she fails to puzzle together why this pattern is present and dangerous: “Her admiration for the doctor grew even more when she noticed how many more poor people – women and girls especially – he helped” (Morrison 64). Cee views this pattern as a representation of the doctor’s kind, giving nature rather than as a warning, and thus another layer is added to the doctor’s deceptively “sheepish” appearance.

Lastly, at the conclusion of chapter four, Cee engages in a truly stomach turning conversation with Sarah, a long term worker of the house. In this ominous scene, Cee is depicted sharing a melon with Sarah, and as they “split the melon,” Sarah repeatedly references that this melon must be female, and why the females are most desirable. As she continues to personify the melon as female, Sarah gives a low-chuckle laugh insinuating that she knows what is going to happen to Cee: “Sarah slid a long, sharp knife from a drawer, and with intense anticipation of the pleasure to come, and cut the girl in two” (Morrison 66). And with this concluding line, the reader is able to assume the reason Frank has received word that Cee is ill, and at the edge of life and death.

After receiving this information, Frank does everything in his power to get to Cee, taking long train rides, staying in strangers homes and so on. When Frank finally reaches Cee, she is in the doctors home, barely conscious and excessively bleeding from her female organs. The Doctor had been consistently drugging Cee and cutting her open bit by bit to perform ungodly experiments. Frank lifts up Cee and rushes her back to their childhood home, where she is delivered to the strong, elderly black woman of the community, who are versed in their own version of the healing process. These women through tough love, and hard work heal Cee both physically and emotionally from the experience that she has just endeavoured. As they rebuild her physical strength, they toughen up her psyche as well: one of the women Ethel even exclaims to Cee, “Don’t let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no evil doctor decide who you are. That’s slavery. Somewhere inside you is that free person I’m talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world”( Morrison 126). Through this healing of the body and mind Cee is finally shown as maturing and independent in character, no longer susceptible to her previous naiveties. As stated by Ethel, “First the bleeding…Next the infection….Then repair” (Morrison 121). Cee begins to truly recognize and accept what had happened to her, and in doing so, she uses this deep pain for personal growth and repair.

As the novel comes to a conclusion, we follow Frank and Cee as they go to bury the man they witnessed as children be improperly buried and hidden from the world. Together the siblings gain closure on the events of their life thus far, accepting the pain, and ultimately conquering it to continue on with their lives.  As they put these bones from their childhood to rest, Cee and Frank stand together under a tree when Cee states: “Come on, brother. Let’s go home” (Morrison 146). This closing line is significant in the fact that Cee is now leading Frank, rather than vice versa. This statement solidifies Cee’s new found strength and independence as a character as she comes full circle at the second burial of this man. 

In 1961 Fannie Lou Hamer went into the hospital to get a tumor removed, she left unaware, that she had been given “a Mississippi appendectomy” without her consent (Medical Apartheid pg. 109.) The loss of autonomy in situations like this were not uncommon during the 20th century when the eugenics movement was on the horizon. During this movement people who were of a specific “racial hygiene” as well as the poor, feeble-minded, and uneducated (Medical Apartheid pg. 191) were sterilized without their consent in hopes to lower the amount of children born with bad genetic profiles. As a result black women were disproportionately forced to undergo either temporary or permanent sterilization. By 1941, 70,000 to 100,000 Americans had faced forced sterilization, long before the same would happen to Fannie (Medical Apartheid pg. 203). This loss of autonomy meant not only the loss of generations, but also a loss of identity to those who wanted to be mothers. The lack of any consent at all meant many women lost the right to choice over what happened to their body. This act dehumanized them by making it so they were not offered the same protections as other’s of different classes and races, making it seem as if they did not deserve the protection informed consent offered other people.

Yet, this was not an isolated moment in the medical community. Between 1944 and 1945 the AEC supported more than 2,000 experiments involving the use of human subjects to test the effects and nature of radiation (Medical Apartheid pg 218). Many of these experiments involved a lack of informed consent and therefore a loss of autonomy. Take the case of Ebb Cade who had large doses of plutonium-239 into his body after surviving a deadly car accident. Unexpectedly, Cade survived but because of this he had some of his teeth pulled, chips of his bones taken, and had to stay longer. Cade never consented to any of this and therefore had no choice in the matter (Medical Apartheid pgs. 216-217). This loss of autonomy once more dehumanized people by leaving them with no control over what happens to their body. 

The idea of having a lack of autonomy arises in Octavia E. Butler’s book Clay’s Ark. In this story a doctor by the name of Blake, along with his two daughters Rane and Kiera are kidnapped and exposed to a disease without their consent. Without being told what exactly could happen to them, they are separated and infected. This, especially in the case of Blake and Rane is explicitly the opposite of what they wanted. Blake protests what is going to happen to him, and is continually looking for a way to cure the disease. This is seen in Blake’s thinking, “He had to find something he could use against them.” (pg. 495), or in how Blake uses his doctor’s bag to examine Meda, hoping to find out more about the disease. However Meda “permitted him to examine her” (pg. 495), despite the fact that Blake did not permit to being infected. This shows that Meda understands the idea of consent, but ignores it when Blake refuses to give it. Butler is giving commentary on how consent can be taken from people when others believe they have something to gain from exploiting that lack of consent. In Meda’s case they gain more people in their community and quiet the compulsion to spread their disease. In the cases in Medical Apartheid the exploitation of people was due to racist beliefs and the idea of furthering medical advancements. Yet, the results remain the same, by taking away one’s bodily autonomy one is dehumanized and stripped of being able to make the right choice for themselves. The act of dehumanizing someone also allows for the precedent to come into place where people are easily cast aside, as dehumanizing becomes an age old practice. As Eli and Meda kidnap more people and their community grows, it encourages the practice. The same thing happens when doctors are found to be justified when doing sterilizations or experiments without a person’s consent.

Some of our strongest abilities are weakened with the sight of fear. Being frightened is indeed an experience. We are a society that adores fear. We thrive off of it; creating terror movies, the influence of shows like Fear Factor, and the media’s portrayal of it. Yet others find it horrifying to leave their homes, to walk down the street; to live. Fear is experienced by many, but only defined by few. Fear is a bodily reaction to stressful stimuli and ends with a release of chemicals that triggers a response. Fear is a feeling we’ve all dealt with before, but have trouble processing this emotion when it happens. Similar to Alice Achitophel in Zulus, fear is something we can’t control, however, we try to find solutions to fight this reaction. We try to find different ways to cope, find people to confide in, but ultimately, this feeling can overcome your psyche.

In Percival Everett’s Zulus, all characters are drowning in fear. Fear of life and death. These characters who are mostly women, deal with a devastated post-apocalyptic world doomed to no return. People are undeniably scarred by an environmental catastrophe making all women unable to bear children. All except for one: Alice Achitophel. In her attempt to grapple reality, she must decipher what’s real from what’s not. Whether her reality is real or not. Readers, like myself are taken into the lamentable life of Alice, an obese government clerk, rejected by society, and the only fertile woman in her world. Alice is both insider and outsider in a world where state violence transforms life into a dystopia. On this dying planet, Alice must cope with being grotesquely obese (considered by her peers), impregnanted, alone, and afraid. And like many of us (and Alice), we too, have our own dealings to cope with, still facing daily pressures: our happiness, health, and the little voice inside our heads.

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There have been many instances where Alice felt daunted and uneasy during her journey in Zulus. It is a feeling that often encompasses Alice, facing the dichotomy of her feeling helpless as she was raped by a stranger (and later impregnanted) and how pivotal it is that she’s “giving birth to the first child in twelve years”. (Everett, 102). She was burdened with nightmares because of this fear. In Chapter H, Everett references her screaming in her dreams. She heard a voice yelling at her claiming that she knew ” [Alice] was infected with a child. I will catch you and kill you. You are not two lives, but half of one” (104). Earlier that day, she had an incident with Rima (a camp resident) who scorned her about being pregnant saying those same words, “I will catch you and kill you”. Post-war, it was unheard of to be a woman and fertile. Alice Achitophel faced people who hated her simply because she was an anomaly, a pregnant and obese woman. Their fear of fertility surrounded Alice because she was different. She wasn’t the norm they adapted to.

She realizes that she is the fate of the planet, but when most around her don’t understand her “condition”, she was hopeless. As said by Alice, “she knew she had no home to which to return, no friends to save the ones who had brought her here, and no hope save what these strange and unknown people offered her” (Everett, 90). She knew she was an outsider.

Alice had a choice. She could’ve chosen to kill off of her child to be accepted by her society or have a healthy baby, with the formidable task of being the only fertile woman alive. Alas, Alice chose herself. In Chapter W, we find that Alice finally welcomes the atypical; her having a child that was a product of rape. Throughout the novel, she battled with this, however, she was the hope of her dying world. She realized her offspring was “a living, breathing child that she could not let go. It was [her] child, a life”. (Everett, 243). I can’t relate to Alice’s experiences entirely, but I can personally understand the feeling of being overcome with anguish. It’s an important observation to make that feeling like an outsider, is in fact, a feeling. There is genuine truth behind this, and in truth, it can be a label you accept and let define you. Like Alice, I’ve always felt opposed to my peers for many reasons (color of my skin, my name, my country of origin). It is an easy place to stay. However, you have the power to change your reaction (to your fears) and to choose yourself and your destined path.

Don’t fear breaking the norm, fear the regret of not making your own choices.

Continue reading “Reflection on my project thus far”

The definition of consent from the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “to give assent or approval”. Giving consent happens in most of our lives very often. Every time we go to the doctors office we sign to give consent to the doctors. Informed consent happens when a physician gets the patient’s authorization to undergo a specific medical intervention. Doctors are supposed to make sure the patient understands the medical information and they are supposed to present all the information including diagnosis and all risks that go along with it. A patient can only make a choice if they have enough information about the treatment, benefits, and side effects. You have the right to decide what happens to your body, because it’s YOUR body.

In my life involving doctors consent I remember back to when I had brain surgery. My neurologist gave me two options to fix the problems in my brain that I was having. There were two different surgeries that I could choose between. He gave my parents and I detailed information for both surgeries. He presented us with all the risks for both surgeries and gave us details on how each procedure would work. Once we decided on a surgery we signed lots of different consent forms. This helped me feel more comfortable going into the procedure because I knew exactly what was going to happen while I was under. This is exactly what a doctor is supposed to do. I could not imagine going to the doctors for a surgery and putting all my trust in a person for them to do some horrible thing to me without me knowing. Or even doing tests on me without me knowing.

The book we have been reading “Medical Apartheid” has many examples of not giving consent. In chapter 9, “Nuclear Winter”, talked about a man by the name of Elmer Allen. Allen had fallen from a train and fractured his leg. Later on he was diagnosed at a free clinic with chondrosarcoma which is cancer of the bone. The doctors then injected his leg with plutonium 238. The medical records said that he was told something about the procedure but he was not actually given enough information to consent to it. The doctors lied and said that this injection was a form of therapy and would be their last hope to save his leg, however, they ended up amputing his leg. In reality, he was part of an experiment. This experiment left him disabled, and greatly affected him for the rest of the years he was alive.

In my mind I really cannot grasp how any doctor could do this to someone. Not only one person but they experimented on 20 people in this same way. There are so many stories just like this one. This is exactly why there is a medical consent requirement. I could not imagine going into a surgery and ending up in some sort of awful experiment instead of being helped. People were tested on like some sort of guinea pigs. They were not aware of what was going on and they were not given any options. Doctors took their body and did whatever they pleased to it. Their bodies were no longer their own. This concept is absolutely horrifying to me.

Another thing I have been thinking about involving consent is not directly involved in the medical field. Listening to Ben
Chapman speak about deception studies is what really started to make me think about consent. Did they give enough information for the people to give consent for the experiment? They were not aware before they started that there was this specific form of ecoli placed in the experiment. Sure, it was no risk to the people in the study but should it have been discussed with them before they gave consent? This really pulls me in different directions trying to decide what is right and what was not. I don’t think they could get accurate information from the experiment if they knew about it before hand because people will act differently if they know. However, I completely understand why people would want to know about it. Listening to Chapman talk about changing how they inform the people at the end comforted me. It showed how much he cared. Ben Chapman is not like one of those doctors who treats the subjects like lab rats. He understands and wants to make sure each person felt comfortable after finding out everything in the experiment.

Consent is clearly an important part of our lives. It is your body and you get to decide what happens to it. I would always want to know all the facts and understand anything that could happen to my body. No one else can decide what happens to my body except me. Listening to Chapman and reading ‘Medical Apartheid’ has really made me realize how important it is to give consent. Not only to give consent but when I’m giving consent how important it is to know exactly what it is that I’m giving consent for.

Throughout literature and history in general, we learn as students that when something bad occurs one of the human reactions is fight or flight, so often we see one of these reactions when presented with stories of runaways. Cee, a character from Home by Toni Morrison, was medically abused by her employer and her brother helped her escape. When she escaped: “Sarah and the doctor stood locked in an undecipherable stare. As Frank passed around them with his motionless burden, Dr. Beau cast him a look of anger-shaded relief” (Home, 112). The lack of reaction from the doctor surprised me when I read this, so I kept going in search of this response. The book goes on, “Once Frank had fumbled and eased his way through the front door and reached the sidewalk, he turned to glance back at the house and saw Sarah standing in the door, shadowed by the dogwood blossoms. She waved. Good-bye – to him and Cee or perhaps to her job” (Home, 112). The doctor practically allows the two to simply walk out the door. Cee was his medical experiment and his reaction to her leaving seems only to be disappointment that he must now find another test subject. The same lack of reaction can be discovered in Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington where Cade, an experimental subject for doctors testing the effects of radioactive elements on human bodies, also escaped with a lack of reaction from those condemning him. “Cade slipped away. One morning the nurse opened his door, and he was gone. Morgan recalled, ‘They were surprised that a black man who had been expected to die got up and walked out of the hospital and disappeared.’ They were also disappointed” (Medical Apartheid, 217). In both Medical Apartheid and Home, the only reaction is disappointment. The captors do not chase after them, trying to hold them for experimentation even longer. After noticing the lack of response, I expected would be appropriate, I questioned the motives behind the experimenters, their thoughts on their subjects, and what affects the disappearance of their subjects had on their experiments. Furthermore, in Zulus by Percival Everett, the main character Alice Achitophel escapes the city in which she is kept and no there are no attempts to catch or prevent her. She later runs away from the rebel camp she spent time living in and returns to the city. The only difference between her two escapes were the reactions coming from the bodies of people residing in the place she left. The city did not seem to particularly care that Alice Achitophel disappeared. However, when she left the rebel camp they searched after her with torches in an attempt to find, capture, and kill her. This seems to represent the type of reaction I expected when reading about the escapees. Personally, I believe that the response of disappointment in the other situations was due to the dehumanization of the person. The victim or subject turned into a number or statistic in the mind of those in which they were escaping from, which seems to be an unfortunate theme in the books we have studied in class.

Race has been long thought to be something biological, something that separated people based on their genetics. This idea of a biological backing for race was used to explain racist differences in IQ, sports ability, and in healthcare. Race was used as a way to “scientifically” treat people differently at the social level. This is and was because race is a social construct, the idea of it being a biological difference was only used to justify the process society was using to keep itself divided among those who were a different race. 

The process to dehumanize African Americans has been used as an excuse to hurt them as a means to an end, and as a way to justify using African Americans as test subjects throughput time. Seeing African Americans as “less than human” was a blanket way of not providing any protection to blacks that white people benefited from. These protections included a say over one’s body after death, a say over treatment choice, and a say in being told what that treatment was. In Medical Apartheid, Harriet Washington tells the story of Sam, an enslaved man who was forced to undergo surgery for jaw cancer. Sam, who had a fear of surgery, possibly due to the stories and pain that surrounded it, was strapped into a chair to avoid escape. He was then operated on against his will (pages 101-103). This inability to say no would have never been taken from a white man, but as a slave Sam had no say over his body. Sam was not the only one, and this is not the only time that African Americans were not given control of their bodies.

In Georgia, W.H. Robert had amputated the leg of a slave girl. Despite only having a minor injury, he still decided to take the leg from the fifteen-year-old child. Robert than explained to his students that the decision to amputate should be weighed by race and class. Taking a limb from a slave was of little importance, but from a white man, the taking of a limb was truly meant to be a last resort (Medical Apartheid, page 109). Even years after slavery was abolished African Americans were still not given the same medical protections as white Americans. In 1945, Ebb Cade was injected with large doses of plutonium-239 solely because he was believed to be able to survive his injuries after a bad car accident (Medical Apartheid page 216). Then in 1947, Elmer Allen was forced to go to UCSF’s free clinic after breaking his leg. It’s important to note that Allen only went there went out of desperation, despite his fear of what might happen to him there. This process of dehumanizing and treating African Americans as less than human had created a fear of the medical community among blacks. And as Allen would find out, for good reason. Allen would have his broken leg injected with plutonium-238. After three days, his leg would need amputated (Medical Apartheid pages 220-222). These experiments violated the consent standards set by both the Judicial Council of American Medical Association, and the ACE physicians, who were in charge of the experimentation on Allen. The idea of consent being taken away from African Americans was not a new thing, despite the new changes, because consent has historically been taken from African Americans. The long process of dehumanizing African Americans and keeping them from being able to consent made it easier to keep them from understanding informed consent even after it was put in place to try and protect minorities and easily exploited groups of people.

This historical lack of consent shows why informed consent is needed within society today. To be able to make intimate and basic healthcare choices well knowing what the risks and benefits of those choices are is a fundamental part of having control over our own body. Making sure one understands consent, making consent a priority, and working to improve the meaning of informed consent can benefit those who feel they have no choice, or how believe the injustices of the past will repeat themselves. Upholding informed consent is how we keep those injustices from repeating themselves and from helping settle the wrongs done to those who were not protected by informed consent.