The Connection Between a Question and an Answer

The Connection Between a Question and an Answer

Skloot exposes the importance of a patient’s proper understanding of a medical procedure prior to the procedure’s performance. Throughout the novel, knowledge of medical practices influences how much an individual questions his/her doctor. Skloot depicts numerous unethical accounts of doctors misinforming or failing to inform patients of procedures and the effects of a procedure. Fear of resistance from test subjects, fear of others exposing the lack of legality in their procedures, and the halting of medical advancements blinds doctors of the necessity of a patient’s understanding prior to medical procedures.

The amount of information doctors provide during large group studies prompts the lack of questioning and resistance from test subjects. Though Southam excuses his behavior as merely “testing for cancer” (Skloot 130), he unethically injects more than a dozen cancer patients with HeLa cells. Fearing resistance and the “phobia and ignorance that surrounds the word cancer” (130) from his patients, Southam knowingly withholds important information from his patients and fails to receive their knowing consent prior to experimentation, leaving patients with physical side effects as well as emotional scarring from an authority figure stealing their personal right of knowledgeable self-decision. Though Southam performs numerous procedures on unknowing and nonconsensual patients, a highly illegal action in modern medical practices of the twenty-first century, this withholding of information finds normality in the 1950s as Skloot explains, “doctors often withheld even the most fundamental information from their patients, sometimes not giving them any diagnosis at all” (63). Southam’s patients do not question his procedure or his medical reasoning due to their own lack of knowledge regarding the contents of the syringe that Southam injects them with. The well-known fact, at the time of Southam’s malpractices, that “doctors knew best, and most patients didn’t question that” (63) steers the patients under examination away from questioning their medical professionals. Vulnerability of those under examination also affects the amount of resistance doctors experience from test subjects; fear of the cancer already inside of them and the disparity for a cure leads the cancer patients under examination to trust their doctors and to believe that the medical procedures their doctors perform are solely for the benefit of their health. Additionally, the Hippocratic Oath and the trusting of doctors from previous generations pushes patients farther and farther away from questioning the intentions of their medical professional. Lack of knowledge, vulnerability, fear, and previous trust all factor into the lack of questioning from patients and a doctor’s abuse of the information he/she controls.

Through questioning, John Moore exposes the