There have been countless stories of Black people, in general, being mistreated in the medical field throughout the years. Specifically, Black women have been used as test subjects throughout medical history. Even now in modern medicine, Black women are misrepresented and unseen, and the result is a fatality.
One of the earliest cases I remember learning about that involved Black women in the medicinal field was Ms. Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was a woman whose cervical cancer cells were taken away from her, without her knowing, and these HeLa cells became the first immortalized cell line. HeLa cells are still used in scientific research to this day. Her cells were taken in 1951, and her family didn’t even know they were being used until 1975. While she wasn’t necessarily harmed in this process, she was used and her family received nothing.
James Marion Sims has been given the name “The Father of Modern Gynecology,” and received many accolades for his achievements in women’s health, however, many people don’t know early in his career his practice on enslaved Black women in the South. In later years, Sims began practicing on white women using anesthesia. This is because he believed that Black people don’t feel pain as much as white people do and this is still believed today by many.
Institutionalized racism affects Black people in every aspect of our lives. Imagine you are going into labor and you feel as if something’s wrong, and your doctor doesn’t seem convinced. However, you can literally feel it. World-renowned tennis player Serena Williams had this feeling after delivering her baby girl in September. She repeatedly told her nurse that she felt a blood clot and she was turned away, disregarding her pain. It turns out Serena Williams was right, and the nurse gave her the medicine that she herself recommended. This and Williams’s surgery could’ve been avoided if her pain was taken seriously.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women. The only thing to explain why this belief even exists is racism. The different beliefs white medical professionals have about Black people include the idea that African Americans have more nerve endings than whites and that black people’s skin is thicker than whites. These racist stereotypes are still around because of years of faulty claims from white physicians. It also starts in our communities. In communities that are predominantly black, there is terrible hospital care and a lack of access to quality counseling and care.
There needs to be an effort from the government, community, and medically trained professionals to combat this problem. There need to be seminars that correct and dispel myths and biases about BIPOC. More money to be placed in hospitals in low-income areas and there need to be deep investigations into pregnancy complications and fatalities. In 2022, there needs to be a change that results in fewer babies without mothers due to negligence. Negligence could have been avoided by listening to the patient and confronting racism.