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African American Ethical Issues

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Introduction
In this paper I intend to look at racism and the ethical issues that came into motion for the African American population. I will look at why African Americans are less likely to be medically treated, how the their rights as clients were often not looked at when deciding how to treat or use the information gathered from the African American population, and what the long term effects were from the Henreietta Lachs case.
Ethical Issues
Not in the too distant past, African American patients often had less than equal care to their white counter parts. Segregation was an often-used way to keep the races apart and was used in all parts of the world that we see. For African American people, they were often afraid …show more content…

(Rollock & Gordon, 2000)) In the case of the family of Henrietta Lachs, they held a belief that white people were racist towards African Americans and often the medical community went out to kidnap them to use as test subjects. This shows a Linked Lives problem where the concept of linked lives suggests that research should also examine how experiences of discrimination encountered by one person may indirectly affect another.(Gee, Walsemann & Brondolo, 2012) In other words, stories and experiences that one person encounters and then tells about or passes down through their family or friends, can often cause others to feel that issue or racist experience even though they didn’t have it happen to them first hand. In the Henrietta Lachs family this is shown by one of her sons refusing to go for medical attention even though he knows there are issues that he is having. He remembers what happened to his mother when she became sick with cancer and remembers that her cells were taken. Together with the stories of kidnapped African American people he is very distrusting of the medical system and does not want to have anything bad happen to him. Add to the fact that African American patients were known to have sub par health care in the days of Henrietta and that segregation was still something that happened, he might not have ever felt comfortable seeking medical attention. Also, due to lack of jobs in some areas as well as less education leading to less job opportunities, many African Americans are not able to access health care. Many clinics in low income

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