Night Doctors (2000)
- We're back to Skloot's narrative, two months after Sonny Lacks didn't show up for their meeting in Baltimore.
- But now he's there, and he tells Skloot she'll have to win big brother Lawrence's approval before any of the family, including Deborah, will talk to him about Henrietta.
- He drops her off in an empty alley to face Lawrence on her own.
- She has no idea what to expect, except that Deborah told her that he didn't like white people asking about their mother.
- But Lawrence cooks for her and chats about his childhood. Until Skloot asks about Henrietta. He tells her that he doesn't remember much about her because the memories were too painful.
- Lawrence begins to talk about the cells; he doesn't really know much about them, but he does know they've done miraculous things in the world of science.
- He asks Skloot to explain about HeLa cells, and it occurs to her that Lawrence doesn't really even know what a cell is.
- She explains as best she can, including some of the advances that HeLa cells helped make possible.
- Sonny returns to make sure Skloot is okay. He, too, only knows that the scientific advances courtesy of HeLa are "miracles."
- But he's brought a surprise guest: Day Lacks. Day is 84 and has gangrene in his feet, which he refuses to have treated. Sonny also has a distrust of doctors and won't have his heart disease treated.
- Bobbette, Lawrence's wife, scoots through. She's not thrilled with Skloot's presence.
- When Skloot asks if Deborah will be joining them, the men laugh. She's not interested in talking about her mother to white reporters.
- Neither is Day, it turns out. He tells her everything she already knows.
- He emphasizes that he allowed the autopsy on Henrietta because the docs at Hopkins promised it might help his children someday. But they already had the cells they wanted by then.
- Bobbette and the rest of the family express great distrust in the doctors at Hopkins and everywhere.
- Day tells Skloot that Hopkins was known in their community for snatching black people off the street for experimentation.
- Bobbette explains that Johns Hopkins Hospital was like the boogeyman for black children in her day: you had to be home by nightfall, or they might take you.
- Skloot explains that the stories about black people being abducted by Hopkins and other hospitals have circulated in the black community since the 1800s.
- And not all of the stories were wrong. Though some of the stories were started by slave owners to scare their slaves into submission, doctors did experiment in horrible ways on slaves.
- These "night doctors" crept about after sunset and snatched any black people that were out to use for their research. Graves were pillaged for corpses.
- People of the black community believed that Hopkins was constructed in a poor black neighborhood for this reason—to keep the bodies coming—rather than to benefit the poor.
- Skloot explains that Johns Hopkins, the philanthropist, had a father who freed his slaves well before Emancipation. Hopkins donated his fortune to build the hospital as a charity for the poor.
- He made sure that the hospital would serve people of all races, and made specific mention of the care to be given to orphaned black children who needed medical care.
- But there was still questionable ethical behavior from the doctors at Hopkins well into the '60s, including procedures that ignored the idea of informed consent.
- Skloot points out that of all the questionable scientific research involving the black community at Hopkins, the Henrietta Lacks case still stands out in most people's minds.
- This is evident during her first meeting with most of Henrietta's immediate family. They tell her that they were never informed about the use of Henrietta's cells.
- They tell her that they feel cheated because people made money off their wife and mother, and they can't even get health insurance.
- Bobbette makes one point perfectly clear: Henrietta did NOT donate her cells. They were taken from her, without consent. That's what infuriates the family.