How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #4
They recruited hundreds of African-American men with syphilis, then watched them die slow, painful, and preventable deaths, even after they realized penicillin could cure them (50).
Skloot's writing here about the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments that weren't discontinued until the 1970s. The experiments showed that the scientific community had also managed to institutionalize racism, and that no outside entity was prepared to stop it. Skloot brings up these experiments to explain why the African American community is often understandably suspicious of medicine and science. These men were not treated as human beings.
Quote #5
He dreamed of never-ending life for those he deemed worthy, and death or forced sterilization for everyone else. He'd later praise Hitler for the "energetic measures" he took in that direction. (59)
Alexis Carrel had been honored with a Nobel Prize for his work on the suturing of blood vessels, but was best known for his attempts to cultivate the first immortal cell line from a chicken heart. Is it shocking that a surgeon who made important contributions to saving lives believed that some of them were more worthy of saving? Carrel supported policies of euthanasia for "unfit" types of people.
Quote #6
"You know other countries be buying her for twenty-five dollars, sometimes fifty? Her family didn't get no money out of it." (81)
Henrietta's cousin Cootie sums up one of the major moral dilemmas surrounding HeLa cells: scientists never informed the family of their use of the tissues, so they couldn't claim any of the profits. A bigger irony? Cootie suffered from polio, a disease for which HeLa cells had been used to create a vaccine.