CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 403
As Rebecca Skloot, after intensive research and interviews with
people involved, notes, at that time "many scientists believed that since
patientsweretreatedforfreeinthepublicwards,itwasfairtousethem
as research subjects as a form of payment" (35). Today, after the
SupremeCourtrulingthatorganiclifecanindeedbepatented(Diamond
v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303, 1980), the commercial aspects of biotic
material "harvested" from human beings have become more urgent,^98
and the Lacks story makes it imperative that they be discussed with
specific reference to race and gender. Incidentally, the HeLa cells are
now the property of Microbiological Associates,Inc., a Michigan based
companyspecializinginlaboratoryscience.
Lacks was both, African American and a woman, her life a clear
example of what Frances Beal and others called the "double jeopardy"
of being multiply disadvantaged and jeopardized, even before her life
wasjeopardizedbycancer.Andthewaythediseaseimpactedonherlife
wastonosmalldegreescriptedbythiscombinationorintersectionality^99
of living in extremely delimiting conditions. These limits, however,
wereofnoimportanceonceLacks'sbodyhadbeentransmogrifiedintoa
biologicalentity,or,perhapsbetter,abiologicalcommodity:HeLacells
evenwenttoouterspaceinordertotesttheimpactofthelossofgravity
on organic life, and thus this part of her traveled more widely than the
personfromwhomtheyoriginatedcouldeverdreamof.
Despite the vast advances in biomedicine made possible by Lacks's
cell line, the overall material conditions under which they were
"harvested" in the 1950s have—at least in Skloot's narrative—not
changed much, at least not for Lacks's family. And so, one of her
daughters comments on the irony that even while "our mother cells
[have] done so much for medicine,how comeher family can't afford to
(^98) For an informative discussion of this issue cf. Rajan 2-5. Skloot, whose book
isthemostcompletereportontheLackscase,isremarkablysanguineaboutthis
issue: "When it comes to money, the question isn't whether human tissues and
tissue research will be commercialized. They are and will continue to be....
The question is how to deal with this commercialization—whether scientists
should berequired to tell people their tissues may be used forprofit, and where
thepeoplewhodonatethoserawmaterialsfitintothemarket-place"(369).
(^99) Onthisissue,andespeciallyonbio-intersectionalitycf.theintroduction.