Biology is the study of life. There is much to be learned from this discipline, and so many advances we have made as a nation are traced back to work done in the Biology laboratories on college campuses. Despite this, the roots of biology are deeply intertwined with structural racism. From experimentation on enslaved Africans to experimentation on Black bodies post slavery, Biology has a past steeped in racist ideologies that led to gross misconduct and exploitation of African Americans (Nurridan, Mooney, & White, 2020; Savitt, 1982). In response to this history, there is severe distrust of scientist’s motives by Black Americans present day,which may explain why some African Americans have decided not to receive the COVID-19 vaccination. The troubled history is not lost on many Black Americans who, when surveyed, as a group are the least inclined to express an interest in getting the vaccine and this hesitancy is born out of a history of being betrayed by science (Jones, 2021). Examples of abuse and exploitation range from well known Tuskegee and lesser known Guatemala syphilis studies by now defamed physician John Charles Cutler,to the harvesting of body parts for scientific exploration without informed consent (Centers for Disease Control, n.d.; Park, 2017; Rever by,2012; Rodriguez et al., 2013). In 1951, a full four years after the Nuremberg code, Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman from Baltimore MD with cervical cancer, had cells taken from a tumor that could be grown easily in the lab and proved to be transformative to the field of cell biology.Numerous institutions profited financially through use of her cells. The cells were taken without consent and Ms. Lacks and her family were not informed or compensated in any way (Beskow,2016; Nature, 2020). The exploitation of persons who have been devalued by white culture is a theme throughout history. Indigenous peoples on this continent were also used as science experiments and treated less humanely than animals for slaughter. Lifesaving medicine was used as a bargaining chip for more compliant tribes during the smallpox pandemic.
Similarly in terms of access to present day life-saving COVID-19 vaccines, it is clear whose lives matter most and what populations had to wait to get access to lifesaving testing and vaccines (Hampton, 2020). The mere fact that the United States Government and Big Pharma were debating whether or not to remove the patents that could get more vaccines out quicker worldwide highlights the inhumanity we face when medicine for profit over people is the national model. Use of public funds for research that then turns private companies into multi-billion dollar enterprises while pricing out those most vulnerable of life saving medication is something we should be taking a hard look at.
No more devalued in this culture presently are the millions of incarcerated people held hidden from view. In Acres of skin: human experiments at Holmesburg Prison. A true story of abuse and exploitation in the name of medical science,Tom Wilkie writes of the medical experimentation on 75 Black prisoners in Holmesburg prison (Wilkie, 2000). From 1951-1974, also well after the Nuremberg ethical code had been established, these studies tested the effects of a known contaminant, dioxin, without the informed consent of the 75 men (Wilkie, 2000).
Biology has also been used as a tool to justify racial hierarchies. Scientific racism has been employed as a tool for white supremacy. From the 4 races of man in the mid-1700’s to the Eugenics movement of the early 1900s, both put forth the claim that there were distinct differences in humans based on race (Timeline of Scientific Racism, n.d.). The Eugenics movement laid bare the dangers of using a false scientific rationale to justify the superiority of a race (Miller, 2014). This use of science to justify unequal treatment has been employed by leaders of nations in order to fight the abolition of slavery, to commit genocide, to forceibly steralize the mentally ill and incarcerated men and women to this day, and to defend unequal cultural practices (Manian, 2020; Stern, 2020).
Despite the understanding that Eugenics is a pseudoscience, we still find remnants of it in the scientific data; highlighting the fact that science is not without its failings and that sometimes data is inaccurate and used to support an agenda that is not scientifically valid(Bhopal, 2007; Eigen, 2005; Kevles, 2011; Michael, 2017). The justification of differential treatment based on biological traits has contributed to unequal access to resources including medical care. One example is the differential of prescribed pain medication for Black patients by doctors of all races under the assumption that they “feel less pain” than their white counterparts (See also the section on Human Sexuality for a discussion of presumed racial pain differential) (Hoffman, Trawalter, Axt, et al., 2016). Structural racism plays a role in federal,state and local funding for housing, healthy food, and protection of clean water, all items needed for our biological well-being (Bank, 1996; Branson, 2017; Miller, 1994; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008). Implicit bias on the part of practitioners (also discussed in the section on Health Education) and governmental leaders coupled with years of structural racism has led us to a place where the lived experience of (specifically) Black Americans, but also other people of color in the United States is vastly different from Whites (Mende-Siedlecki et al., 2019; Metzl,2009; Oliver et al., (2014).
Similarly, the Indian Vaccination Act of 1832 has an eerily familiar theme to the Tuskegee and Guatemala studies (Reverby, 2012). While nowhere in the literature does it state that the vaccine trials caused Native deaths, many Native Americans recount the history about how the government forced the trials on them with this act, and kept a list of all the Natives who were vaccinated. The belief is that the shots they were given did not vaccinate from Smallpox as it was claimed to do, but instead gave Native Americans the disease and was akin to murder. It is not hard to imagine this taking place based on the attempted smallpox transmission via blankets handed out to Native Americans during forced relocation as a form of genocide(Brands, 2005). According to tribal elders, the list of names of those who received the smallpox vaccine was lost some time ago so tracing these claims has proven impossible. It is interesting that many academic papers discuss the smallpox genocide was caused by not being given the vaccine, when another argument is that it was caused by the vaccine itself (Pearson, 2003).Because of a well-documented track record of unethical practices on the part of white scientists and practitioners, a severe mistrust of white medicine further exacerbates equitable access to care for many Black, Indigenous and other People of Color in the United States.
The irony behind the amount of ways in which Biology has been used to maintain structural racism and exploit people of color is it is also the key to identifying the truth about race (Kevles, 2011). As a social construction, race and its consequences are quite real but there is no biological basis in racial differences (The Biology of Skin Color, 2015; Public Broadcasting Service, n.d.). Just as in other academic disciplines, the diversification of scholars in the field likely will lead to a more robust anti-biased field. The current numbers still are on par with other STEM fields in terms of diversity of students and faculty but are gaining ground in terms of representation. Although biology boasts a higher number of non-white doctorates awarded,it is still not representative of the population at large so there is much work to be done(National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2017).
