Medical Reparations
With Lacks in mind, we must endeavor to correct the harms of the past – yes, sometimes with cash – in order to forge a more equitable future for all of us - Samantha Willis
image by: HWN
HWN Suggests
Henrietta Lacks’ family finally got their due; many more never will
The descendants of Virginia-born miracle woman Henrietta Lacks finally won a major settlement with a biotechnology company that profited billions from Lacks’ ever-reproducing cells; I congratulate them. The hard-won settlement is a glimmer of justice flashing within a dark facet of America’s medical and scientific progress, fields fueled by racist, unethical practices in the past and present that have taken so much from Black people and given very little in return...
What about the other Black Virginians and Americans who have also contributed to medical and scientific progress? What is their reward and legacy?
The sepia-skinned victims of Richmond grave robbers – the unidentified…
Featured
Medical exploitation of Black people in America goes far beyond the cells stolen from Henrietta Lacks that produced modern day miracles
Lacks is one of the most well-known examples of medical exploitation on a Black body. It is far from the only example.
Articles of Interest
A Public Health Case for Reparations
Public health can and should be a forceful voice in the case for reparations to African-Americans for slavery because reparations would be a powerful tool toward the goal of eliminating Black-white health disparities and a path to better health for all...
Are Reparations an Answer to Black Health Disparities?
In the long debate over cash reparations—paying money to the descendants of enslaved people—very little has been written about their possible effects on health. That has changed in recent years. A modeling study published in 2021, for instance, argues that if reparations had been paid in Louisiana before the start of COVID-19, transmission in the spring of 2020 could have been reduced by between 31% and 68% in the state’s population at large.
Being Black in America Is a Health Risk. It's Time for Reparations.
Cash would not only be a form of repayment, it would also undeniably improve people's health.
Medical Reparations Have Arrived
Changes designed to increase black patients’ access to kidney transplants pervert good medicine and punish white patients to right nonexistent wrongs.
Medical Reparations: A Resolution Paper
Despite the abolition of slavery and the inclusion of former slaves and their descendents as equal citizens, the generation-wide life expectancy gap between Black and white Americans has not significantly narrowed since antebellum times. Racial disparities are entangled with poverty, class, and social power in myriad forms, and these contribute to unequal health outcomes. Healthcare institutions have harmed Black people through unequal access to medical care, racialized medical theories, histories of experimentation and institutionalized biases in clinical care.
The Case for Health Reparations
The disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on racially marginalized communities has again raised the issue of what justice in healthcare looks like. Indeed, it is impossible to analyze the meaning of the word justice in the medical context without first discussing the central role of racism in the American scientific and healthcare systems.
The medical system has failed Black Americans for centuries. Could reparations be the answer?
The growing, and sometimes conflicted, calls for cash payments to achieve parity and better health outcomes, explained.
