I believe that Harriet Washington argues against the comparison of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the COVID vaccine trials because of the difference in not only the location of the trials but also the informed consent of participants. If the COVID-19 vaccination trials were being done by U.S. citizens there is a need for informed consent of all participants but many countries have the idea of looking toward Africa. They knew there would be an, “… abundance of subjects who had no medical care and would grasp at whatever straw was offered them…” (Washington) there is no oversight in conducting these clinical trials in other continents, and there have been some cases in which researchers lie about the research they conducted.
When Kaushik Sunder Rajan talks about the term “shell game” he is saying that there is a kind of deception and evasive action when conducting these trials. There are many public and private companies that fund these trials for vaccines, but when it comes time to take the blame for wrongdoing, each party sends out a statement saying they condemn whatever actions that are causing backlash, and no one gets held accountable. Due to no accountability, there is an ingrained distrust of the medical community within minority groups, because of its history of mistreating and ignoring the pleas of underrepresented communities.
I choose to do a “Deep Dive” of The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks when she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital to receive treatment for her cervical cancer her cells were taken from a biopsy and studied by Dr. Gey. The use of her cells helped test the effects of treatments of cancer cells without human participants. The outcome of this is wonderful, except her cells were taken and studied without her consent. When taking into account Henrietta’s SSIs, her being a black woman is important, because it seems that the medical community has a history of mistreating black women.
This bias can be seen very clearly in the case of Serena Williams, shortly after the birth of her daughter Williams was having breathing problems due to her history of pulmonary embolisms. Williams, knowing her body and having information about this previously life-threatening condition informed the nurse, but the nurse thought the pain medicine was making Williams confused. Williams continued to ask for a CT scan and a blood thinner, and after asking several medical professionals, they finally gave her the CT scan which showed several small blood clots in her lungs. Williams was placed in a life-threatening, pregnancy-related complication, and this is something that black women are disproportionately faced with, due to a bias on how black women are treated by medical professionals.