Three Doctors Suffering Summary

South man was also withholding information to keep his study going. In page 130, paragraph 4 Skloot states, “The deception was for his own benefit-he was withholding information because patients might have refused to participate in his study if they'd known what he was injecting.” southman neede his study to keep running the way it was so he had to keep the information away from the

Southam did not want to tell the patients about the vaccine with Henrietta's cancer cells because he knew they would start questioning his research. Secondly, new diagnosis could be discovered

Throughout the chapter Skloot gives examples on how Southam did research on patients without their knowledge. On page 128 she wrote,”He told them he was testing their immune systems; he said nothing about injecting them with someone else’s malignant cells.” Southam never told the patients that they were participating in a cancer experiment at all. Skloot points out that if the patients knew this they might not be willing to participate.

The major ethical issue found in Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, was that doctors did not get informed consent before doing a procedure to a patient or using a patient’s biopsy tissue for their personal research and profit. Patients

For example,it say, “Before the Board of Regents announced its decision, the negative press about Southam’s work had gotten the attention of the NIH, which funded his research and required it's investigators to get consent for all studies involving humans.” Another example,it says, “Beecher published a detailed list of the twenty-two worst offenders, including researchers who'd injected children with hepatitis and others who'd poisoned patients under anesthesia using carbon dioxide. Southam’s study was included as example number 17.” These pieces of textual evidence show how NIH found Southam and other scientists were doing unethical

After evaluating Skloot's claim in paragraph four on page one hundred thirty, I as well do believe that Southam probably would have continued to inject patients without their permission if it wasn't for the arrangement he made with Emanuel Mandel. Mandel, Southam, and the staff at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital(all but three) were going to inject the patients without telling them they contained cancer cells. This is the start of proving that Southam would've still injected patients without their permission because when he had the opportunity he was going to make the staff at the hospital do his research by injecting the patients for him so he wouldn't get in trouble because they weren't necessarily his patients.

The relationship between a patient and his or her doctor was trustworthy to the point where the patient did not ask their doctor questions. Skloot describes this concept by stating, “There’s no indication that Henrietta questioned him; like most patients in the 1950s, she deferred to anything her doctors said. This was a time when “benevolent deception” was a common practice- doctors often withheld even the most fundamental information from their patients, sometimes not giving them any diagnosis at all” (63). Patients at this time trusted their doctors, and this corresponds to this thought of ‘doctors knowing what’s best and to not question it.’ Skloot was not sure if Henrietta actually questioned her doctor, but she was definitely sure of the concept, ‘benevolent deception,’ being an accepted tradition in the medical field at that time. Another example of deception is, “But Southam wasn’t their doctor, and he wasn’t withholding upsetting health information. The deception was for his benefit- he was withholding information because patients might have refused to participate in his study if they’d known what he was injecting” (130). By not telling patients about injecting them with HeLa cells, Southam was putting them at risk. Despite the fact that they might have declined to cooperate in this study, patients still have the right to know and to be asked for

Regardless, the unconsented medical experimentation of African Americans has been active from the colonial times to present day. In his book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Experimentation on Black Americans From the Colonial Times to Present, Harriet A. Washington captures the beginning of this abuse to as early as the times of slavery. Malcolm Mills, a journalist wrote a review on this book and comments on how Washington “paints a powerful portrait of the medical establishment's abuse of power by exploiting prevailing racial politics beginning in the era of slavery. When medical transgressions often included painful procedures on men, women, and children who had no legal protection and could not object”. He continues saying how it went through to the 20th century when the dangers of certain procedures and their side effects were kept from test

The concept of informed consent that we have today did not exist in the 1950s when Henrietta’s cells were obtained. Patients were regularly used in research without their knowledge. Nevertheless, some doctors had unethical standards. Dr. Chester Southam, a credible researcher of cancer, developed a theory that “the cancer was caused by either a virus or an immune system deficiency” (Skloot 128) and the bodies of patients’ who had suffered with cancer in the past would reject the HeLa cells. He tested the patients and “he said nothing about injecting them with someone else’s malignant cells” (Skloot 128). Southam believed that revealing details to patients would create a “phobia and ignorance” (Skloot 130) in their mind. He injected “more than six hundred people for his research, about half of them cancer patients” (Skloot 129), telling them “he was testing their immune systems” (Skloot 128). Southam expanded with his experiments on testing

The main theme of “Final Cut” by Atul Gawande is that medicine is an inexact science and doctors are not always sure of themselves, even if they appear confident. Gawande’s main argument is simply stated: there has been a decline in the amount of autopsies performed in the medical field as a result of medical arrogance; over confident doctors believe they know the cause of death and do not want to perform autopsies. Gawande illustrates his argument by outlining the history of autopsy use in medicine, incorporating medical cases that he has experienced as a surgeon, and including statistics on autopsy usage. “Final Cut” is an outstanding profile on the decline of autopsy use in medicine. What makes “Final Cut” an enjoyable and informative article for all readers is its use of strategies associated with fiction such as the establishment of characters, balance between medical information and personal experience, and its use of active voice.

Holmesburg prison and the Tuskegee Experiment both had doctors use helpless people to experiment on. In Tuskegee, the doctors told the men that they had bad blood, and that they could get free medical treatments. The men in Tuskegee believed that they needed treatment and took the deal. Similar in Holmesburg prison, the men needed money and the doctors bribed them with money to do the experiments. Allen Hornblum, an author, said in Acres of Skin: Medical Abuse Behind Bars, "Inmates participated not because they were patriotic not because they wanted to advance in science. They were interested in gaining some money." Doctors used money against the prisoners in Holmesburg prison. The scientists found the most important thing the people needed and used that against them in both pieces of research. The doctors used free medical care against men in Tuskegee and used money against the men

Over four hundred men tested with syphilis were selected to participate in the study which included Miss Evers’ Boys. Through her deceit, Miss Evers convinced the men to participate in the treatment which only included placebos and liniment. Throughout the duration of the study, the researchers which included the doctors, Dr. Brodus and Dr. Douglas; Nurse Evers and the federal government failed to fully explain the nature of the research to the victims; deceiving the participants telling them only that they had bad blood and not telling them that active treatment was being withheld from them.

In a time where blacks were heavily discriminated, three doctors: George, Sam, and Rameck have all had their struggles in life, but have still overcome these obstacles and achieved their dreams. The book is written by The Three Doctors in The Pact―Dr. George Jenkins, Dr. Sampson Davis, and Dr. Rameck Hunt. The name of the book is based off of the promise they all made: to make it through high school, college, and medical school together and become doctors. For these reasons, I highly suggest that you read The Pact―and if you’ve read it before, then read it again, for good books never grow old.

In addition to the fact that these experiments were deeply flawed on a moral level, they were also conducted in a poor professional manner. Absolutely nothing about these medical procedures could be considered safe or organized. There were hardly any regulations, guidelines, or producers set in place that were expected and executed in the same manner repetitively. As Richard Plant points out, none of the medications could be tested for potency or cleanliness, and none of the staff had access to materials that would let them check the patients hormonal blood levels before or after injections were given out. Samples that had been taken from the patients and sent to Prague for further examination often sat for so long that they became pointless and futile. Not to mention the fact that the staff would mislabel the samples so frequently that it was hard to truly test any of progress of the experiment. Records show different names on the roster of men enduring this treatment quite consistently, leaving a confusing paper trail and no way to fully document how many injections someone was given, how frequently they obtained them, or how they had effected their “illness”.

The art of medicine and curing diseases was not always approached in a scientific way. In fact, many advances occurred between 1919 to 1939, after technological advances allowed scientists to apply the scientific method to medical research. At this time, the ethics of using patients as test subjects either for new medicines or as samples for further testing were not considered. An extreme example of this was the Nazi’s using concentration camp inmates – including children – to run painful and invasive experiments. More modern examples are not so easy to identify as unethical, however. While amputating a leg to develop methods to deal with fractures and war wounds is obviously unethical, harvesting cells to develop a vaccine is not so clear cut, as the disadvantage to the patient is hard to identify. Coming from the various Nazi testing and especially the Nuremberg testing and trials, another code of ethics was developed, called the Nuremberg Code.