404 RüdigerKunow
see no doctors?" (qtd. in Skloot 11).^100 In this way, Lacks's biological
make-up, her idiosyncratic cells, invisible to the naked eye, are
nonethelessgreatvisualizers;theymakevisibleawe—establishedsocial
andculturalpraxisthatseemstotallyunrelatedtocellbiology,evenasit
grounds the differential distribution of life chances, not only in the
1950s but also today. Among its many meanings, the story of Henrietta
Lacks is thus a clear case of "medical apartheid" (Harriet Washington's
term): she was experimented on but the material benefits of that
experimentwenttoothers.
But even this is not the whole story. Aside from being a landmark
caseinthehistoryofmedicine,Lacks'sgenesandtheusestowhichthey
have been put raise a number of important ethical, social, and cultural
concerns. More specifically, the Lacks case invites renewed reflection
on the spatial and temporal circumference of the human body and
humanlifeingeneral.Today,therearemoreLackscellsalivethanever
existedinherbody,and"theyhavenowbeenlivingoutsideherbodyfar
longerthantheyeverlivedinsideit"(Deflerqtd.inSkloot4).TheHeLa
cell line is cancer without a body, its presence and its long-lasting
effects defy many of the time-honored assumptions about self, identity,
the duration of human life, autonomy, a person's link with the somatic
basisofhisorherexistence.Thesequestions,togetherwiththeanswers
provided by medical experts, get, as Henrietta Lacks's story shows, a
particular inflection in the context of race and gender. Cancer may be a
"silent killer" but it kills differently under the auspices of "the unique
social and cultural histories attached to specific populations in the
UnitedStates"(Holloway6).
The double jeopardy of being African American and a woman also
animates Audre Lorde's Cancer Journals (discussed above for its
normo-critical thrust). In this diary-like memoir, Lorde promises to be
absolutely honest about the excruciating pain caused by her double
mastectomy.^101 Part of her determination is not to settle for "the empty
(^100) The disjunction between the body as personal and that as legal property is
crucial here. In a related case, Moore v. Regents of California, the courts
rejected the compensation claims of a person whose spleen had been taken out
andusedformedicalresearch(Holloway8;Skloot226-30).
(^101) For more on the gendered prejudices which made radical mastectomies the
treatmentofchoiceinearlycancertreatmentcf.Mukherjee65,68-69.