The Hippocratic oath is a sacred vow undertaken by physicians and medical professionals since AD 275. To paraphrase it says that the doctor will to the best of their ability treat the ill and wounded, respect and preserve the privacy of all patients and pass on their knowledge to future generations. This oath is not law, so it is up to interpretation however those that take the oath are morally bound to fulfill it. Medical malpractice and mistreatment is unfortunately common today and more prominently throughout history. Nazi and Japanese experimentation during WW2 are very good examples. Qualified doctors broke the Hippocratic oath and used their knowledge to torture people and further eugenics study. This data is still used to this day. The question is, is that morally sound? Is that still upholding the Hippocratic oath? Since WW2 the Nuremberg code was put into place to stop the dehumanising and immoral torture done in the name Colquhoun however still many physicians did not uphold this. We see medical ethics when discussing abortion rights, tissue and organ donation, confidentiality, euthanasia, vaccines, and many more. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot, Playing God by Glenn Colquhoun, the spoken word What to do When a Politician tries to fall into your Vagina Feet First by Theresa Davis and the 1987 Metro article An Unfortunate Experiment at National Women’s Hospital by Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle all share the same theme of medical ethics and show it in different ways for different audiences.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot is a nonfiction book that tells two stories. One is the story of a black woman in the 1950’s who went to the doctor for treatment for her cervical cancer and ended up having her cells growing in a lab for many years without her knowledge or consent. The other story is of Henrietta’s family learning about what happened to her and trying to get justice for her stolen cells. Henrietta is referred to throughout history as pretty much anything but her name, Helen Lane, Larson or simply HeLa. This codename of a sort used for her cells was a common practice in the 1940–50s, taking the first 2 letters of the first and last name. It was used to protect anonymity but it ended up being very dehumanising for Henrietta and many other patients because after she died most people referred to her cells as HeLa or guessing her name as Helen Lane. No one knew the name of the woman who did so much for science.
Dr Richard Wesley TeLinde would often take tissue samples from women with cervical cancer in the hopes that the cells may be able to be grown outside of the body. He did this without the consent of the patient. These samples were not small either, they were “two dime-sized pieces of tissue… one from her tumor and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby”. She and her family had no idea these cells were taken and after she died denied them permission to take any sampling from her, Henrietta’s husband Day stating “right after she died they called me in the office wanting to get my permission to take a sample of some kind. I decided not to let them”. By this point, they had already taken the tissue samples and they were in culture in a lab growing. The family was never given any compensation for the cells stolen from Henrietta and were tested on themselves without full knowledge of what was going on because doctors were blindly trusted. As a black woman in the 1950’s Henrietta will have assumed that these white doctors would know better than her and to question them on what they were doing would be embarrassing. Not only was she a woman but also a black woman in the Jim Crow Era in America with only six years of education, no one would have listened to her anyway. Informed consent is one of the big ethical issues brought up in this book. Henrietta was not told about her tissue samples being taken and was also not advised about how her radiation treatment would affect her body. She was not told that her treatment would render her infertile. In her medical records it is stated “Told she could not have any more children. Says if she had been told so before, she would not have gone through with the treatment” It was standard practice to tell patients receiving a hysterectomy that they would be infertile but in Henrietta’s case whether it be due to her being black, uneducated or because of an incompetent doctor she wasn’t.
Another big issue is even if she was told would she or her family understand? Because of the time, their occupations as tobacco farmers and their skin colour the Lacks’s were not well educated and many of them did not even know what a cell was until the author of this book, Rebecca Skloot spoke to them. How were they supposed to understand the complexity of cell growth in labs when many many of us well-educated people 70 years later can’t? You cannot give consent unless you completely and fully understand what you are consenting to, and that is non-negotiable. This book dives deep into the idea of medical ethics in many different aspects and brings to light this issue. Very few people had heard of Henrietta Lacks until this book was published in 2010, 59 years after Henrietta’s death. Rebecca Skloot has shone a light on this issue and brought forth discussions about morality in the practice of medicine in both history and modern day. Doctors are viewed as very important, knowledgeable almost untouchable members of our society and with that impression of them comes a great amount of arrogance. These men and women involved in the mistreatment of Henrietta Lacks deserve to be persecuted for their crimes that ultimately stem from racism. Because in actual fact it wasn’t “just a different time” the Nuremberg code was already well established and the vast majority of other doctors in the ’50s were gaining consent and informing their patients of the procedures they were to undergo. No matter our status we deserve to be told what is happening to our bodies.
Playing God by Glenn Colquhoun
Playing God is a poetry collection written by New Zealand doctor turned poet Glenn Colquhoun. It shows the extreme arrogance but also the insecurity of medical professionals. This collection is split into 5 parts; Patients I have Known, Diseases I have Known, Spells, A Portrait of a Doctor as a Young Man and Playing God. The first poem I wish to discuss is The Crumbling Patient in Patients I have Known. Colquhoun describes his treatment of a female patient using crude metaphors that dehumanise her. “I glued her nose back on, with chewing gum, Later — her hair fell out, I taped the hair back to her head” and “I fastened her legs with an old hinge” these are two very good examples of this dehumanisation. To me it feels as if he is trying to fix her up but that he doesn’t have the tools, possibly talking about the severe underfunding in the medical industry worldwide. It feels very dispirited. After ‘fixing her up’ the poem ends with “I said goodbye, and hoped she would not slam the door on the way out” This poem to me shows the immoral treatment of patients from a higher level. It’s about not having the funds to treat everyone well and doctors having to be resigned to that.
The poem A Medical Education in A Portrait of a Doctor as a Young Man shows how doctors are taught from the very beginning to see patients as pretty much anything other than human. The human body is described as an elevator door, an animal, the inside of a watch, a fish, a bird, a number, a map, a collapsed tent and an instrument. A quote that I think is important is “In geriatrics I saw that the neck becomes the shape of an apple core” This shows how doctors will compare the body to inanimate objects to make it easier to operate on. They use metaphors to distance themselves from the truth that their patient is a person, with dreams, a family, a life. A neck being the shape of an apple core shows sagging aged skin that is close to death. Yet it is compared to something that doesn’t make the doctor feel as if it is alive. I understand the importance of being able to distance yourself from the reality of the situation at hand so that you may act accordingly to save that person’s life however, a patient is a person, not a body, not a disease, not an elevator door, a map, the inside of a watch or an animal. This use of distancing can lead to mistreatment, not gaining full informed consent like in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. We have seen that this leads to improper and immoral treatment.
Playing God by Glenn Colquhoun is a beautifully put together poetry collection that shows us a doctor’s perspective of medical ethics. It brings up the issue of patient dehumanisation in order to get the job done. At the end of the day, a patient is a person not just a body to operate on. It also shows us the ethical issue of underfunding. The mistreatment of patients often comes from underfunding. We have seen through the Covid-19 pandemic that worldwide hospitals are overflowing and patients are dying because they can’t be properly cared for. In third-world countries, we have seen how half a population will be wiped out from an utterly preventable disease. Funding for healthcare is not a privilege, it is a human right. Another very good example of this immoral underfunding issue is in countries with entirely private healthcare systems. It is common for Americans to avoid going to hospitals even in life-threatening situations because they can’t afford to pay the bills that stack up.
What to Do When a Politician Tries to Fall into Your Vagina Feet First by Theresa Davis
What to Do When a Politician Tries to Fall into Your Vagina Feet First written and performed by Theresa Davis is a spoken word that within the span of three minutes discusses the issue with male politicians continually involving themselves in issues relating to women’s bodies. She argues for reproductive rights as well as rape and sexual assault victim rights. The most important point she argues is that men have no place in the discussion of women’s healthcare rights if they have never and will never be directly impacted by said rights, “Since you cannot walk in my shoes, imma need you to take them off” I have never once seen a woman try to voice her opinion about vasectomies and a man’s right to have one because we all know that they have that right to choose what happens to their bodies. The slam-dunk passage of this entire poem is “You cannot dick-tate who lives in my womb or who is evicted. And how dare you suggest I get over it? No matter how many times you say it, there’s no such thing as legitimate rape.” It perfectly sums up everything she is saying. She has masculinized the word dictate to show us that it is a man dictating what happens to women’s bodies. The use of the metaphor of housing and eviction for pregnancy and abortion is very effective because it shows it as something very simple really. Her womb is her property and she gets to choose who lives there.
Many courts have ruled over victims of rape being allowed abortions because they believe that it is wrong to kill a ‘child’. Texas republican nominee Clayton Williams stated that “Rape is kinda like the weather. If it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”. Missouri representative Todd Akin said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that thing down.” I believe this is the statement that Davis is referencing by saying that “There is no such thing as legitimate rape” She blatantly puts forward her opinions and takes no bullshit. Having prominent political figures saying these sorts of things about rape and Mike Huckabee saying that “Planned Parenthood isn’t purely a ‘healthcare provider’ any more than a heroin dealer is a community pharmacist.” and Trump calling Planned Parenthood an “abortion factory” is disgusting and disgraceful in the utmost sense of the words. We women should have the rights to our own bodies just as any man does. My vagina is absolutely none of anyone else’s business, especially not an old white man who knows nothing of how difficult it can be to be a woman. Politicians have far too much of a say in healthcare issues they know very little on the subject of, I am willing to listen to the opinion of a doctor on these subjects but not a cocky uninformed male politician. I firmly believe that practising doctors should have far more of a say in medical legislation because they are educated deeply on the subject and also have dealt with patients on this matter. Davis perfectly voices her opinion and the opinions of many other women, using colloquial language directed towards a younger audience that encourages casual conversation about this. We need to be educated on what medical rights we have and don’t have because it can lead to situations that will permanently and deeply affect us.
The Unfortunate Experiment by Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle
The Unfortunate Experiment written by Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle is a Metro article published in 1987 about Associate Professor Herbert Green’s experiments on 948 women with Carcinoma in Situ (CIS) in the cervix, at National Women’s Hospital (will be referred to as NWH) from 1964–74. CIS is an abnormal clump of cells that can lead to cancer and spread to normal cell tissue. This article lead to the Cartwright Inquiry in 1987–88 which resulted in 3 people being charged in court and 19 women receiving financial compensation. This article references the story of a woman using the pseudonym Ruth as well as showing a full timeline of Green’s experimentation.
Green received permission in 1966 from the NWH senior medical staff and hospital committee to perform his study. At the time there was a debate about whether or not CIS lead to cancer and doctors formed many different opinions and ideas around this. Green did not believe that CIS cells became cancer cells and thought that it was a harmless disease, he also thought that the treatment of CIS as cervical cancer was harmful to the patients and humanity as a whole. This was because some of the treatments rendered the patients infertile and Green believed that sterilisation was wrong and that a woman had “thrown away a unique possession” by being sterilised. The basic rundown of what Green did was refuse to treat women with CIS, perform unnecessary procedures on women without diagnoses and not inform the patients of their controversial treatments. The procedures used were punch biopsies to diagnose, a rather minor procedure in which a small piece of tissue is taken out, cone biopsies, a more invasive procedure taking a larger piece of tissue to confirm diagnoses and to look at progression, radiation treatment and hysterectomies, in which the entire uterus is removed. These last two rendered the patient unable to conceive children again. In 1963 Green performed cone biopsies on 9 women that had not had any previous diagnosis and only had the procedure as the cells had looked suspicious, it was later found that 5 of these women did not even have CIS and that they did not need this drastic of a treatment at all. He later performed between 5 and 16 hysterectomies on women without prior diagnosis which of course rendered them infertile. He also chose not to treat some women at all for their CIS because of his belief that it was harmless. 8 patients died because of lack of treatment.
Coney and Bunkle show us Green’s sexist behaviour and views, which further makes us question why he was a gynaecologist. When talking about a woman choosing to be treated for CIS he stated “How can we possibly expect her to make what is really our decision?”. When talking about his upset with seeing younger patients (under 30) dying in treatment he said “When you see a young attractive woman who’d make a wonderful friend for a man a little younger than myself, when you see her die, it’s not nice, that’s why I’ve been so vocal. This is bad for mankind” This statement is so incredibly sexist it is almost laughable. How disgusting is it for him, a doctor I might add, to see a patient die and only think about how some man could have used her? And also to say that this is what makes it bad for mankind, not someone dying too early or children losing a mother. It is truly disgusting. Coney and Bunkle including Green’s sexist views were very brave of them. It was publicly calling out a man of high status and power when women were still widely viewed as lesser. He was a sexist, pro-life gynaecologist (which is such a hypocritical statement by the way) and for two women to write all this in a magazine as well known and reputable as Metro is astounding. He chose what happened to these women’s bodies which resulted in 8 deaths, my mother’s great Aunt Leila was one of the 8. It is inexcusable and the fact that he got off scot-free is infuriating, I want justice for my Leila, Ruth and all these women. Ruth stated after one visit to NWH in 1985 “I feel as if they’ve been experimenting on me” of course, they were. These words are so similar to Henrietta Lacks’s it is haunting. This article’s use of telling a survivor’s story of this ordeal is an incredibly effective way of making the reader see that this was real, that many women went through this grotesque experimentation without their consent.
This history of women being experimented on for a man’s gain is incredibly upsetting. I one day hope to be a doctor and I would be disgusted to look at myself in 15 years time thinking of myself as better than anyone else and able to choose what happens to someone else’s body without their consent. This topic is incredibly close to me as I had major surgery just last year and I cannot imagine how the experience would have been for someone who wasn’t as privileged as I to have access to education and be brought up to question everything as I was. It does not matter how arduous it is, a patient must be told what is happening to their body and they should have the right to refuse. A patient’s body is theirs to choose what happens to it. Three of these texts specifically discussed women’s medical rights, this was not an intentional choice but when reading texts about medical ethics it is primarily about women and people of colour that are treated immorally. I believe that these texts all do an excellent job of showing us that although society tells us to trust doctors that we should question them. They may have gone through all this training but that does not make them morally sound. And with so much responsibility over people’s lives, they should be challenged. Playing God shows us how the doctors referenced in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and An Unfortunate Experiment at National Women’s Hospital may have been feeling. It shows us that this issue partially stems from systemic issues and that often doctor’s will follow what they are taught blindly. It also shows that like in What to do When a Politician tries to fall into your Vagina Feet First ultimately politicians hold power over what happens to patients. The spoken word references women’s bodily autonomy but it makes you think that it mustn’t just be them.
