The issue of misogynoir, a term coined by Moya Bailey and very similar to every other issue involving racism, is that it is systemic. One of the systemic topics that will be addressed today is the issue of misogynoir in medicine.
The infamous case of Henrietta Lacks continues to be a source of vital data in medical research. For those unaware, Henrietta Lacks was a Black woman, mother, and tobacco farmer born in Virginia in 1920, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and died shortly afterwards. Her story takes an even worse turn when her doctor, George Grey, surgically removed cancer cells from her cervix without her knowledge or consent. Statistically speaking, a Black woman is 71% more likely to die from cervical cancer, and to mix that with a doctor that turned a dying woman into a profit, is questionable at best.
What’s worse is that the HeLa immortal cell line, named after Henrietta Lacks, grew to generate millions of dollars, none of which the family she left behind had received. In addition to the medical field profiting on her death, her family was not aware of the cells until 20 years after Lacks’ passing.
Black mothers, like Henrietta Lacks, continue to die with a rate of 3 to 4 times more than white mothers; overall, Black women are 243% more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes than a white woman.
Often, one of the causes of this is environmental racism. Environmental racism, simply put, is described as, “the injustice that occurs in practice and in policy within a racialized context” (Bullard 2001). Areas of industrialized agriculture are closer to minority communities than white communities, with the chemical runoff from factories seeping into the rivers they get their water from. This can cause medical complications, such as chronic illness, various forms of cancers, and neurological disorders. Even in the cases where it does not result in a serious problem, a result from the worry of obtaining one of these illnesses often results in race-related stress.
Race-related stress is the chronic psychological and physiological distress on people of color due to racism. While some of the results can be conditions like hypertension, heart disease, and muscle tension, there are much more severe ones that could be much more detrimental to the holistic health and wellness of the person.
The biggest issue is that it’s not inherently on the medical professional or the environment, but the way Black women have been historically and continue to be treated. A prime example is a 2016 study that was done on Medical Students, 50% thought that Black people couldn’t feel pain— a concept held over from slavery when women were experimented on without anesthesia or proper consent.
The best part of modern technology is that we have the ability to educate ourselves and share our knowledge with others in order to spread awareness about problems many people face, and provide context on why it exists so we know how to combat it.
Published November 21, 2020
Written by Victoria Montalvo ~ Edited by Fiona Xu
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