Cheryl Dotty Moral Laboratories Summary

Cheryl Mattingly’s Moral Laboratories is an article, detailing the struggles of having sick children with sickle cell anemia, analysing the series of events both mother and daughter face in light of chronic illness (99). This reading revolves around the story of Dotty, a dedicated mother, and her 9 year-old daughter Betsy. Dotty’s life is solemnly focused on her daughter’s health, treatments, and happiness. Betsy condition of sickle cell, influences Dotty’s ambition to discover treatments and learn more about the disease. During this process, Betsy’s mother becomes rather knowledgeable about sickle cell anemia, and it is this knowledge that causes her to become rather critical of the ways in which doctors treat Betsy (Mattingly 115). Throughout the Mattingly’s work, themes of power and race arise. Doctor Kesen’s automatic assumption of power over Dr. Carter, is a main illustration of his arrogance. As Dotty and her doctor walk in for a consultation, Dr. Kesen inquires if Doctor Carter has spoken badly about him (Mattingly 106). If I were in Dotty’s shoes, I would question his sincerity, as

Odilia and her family resided in Mukoboina, a community in the Delta Amacuro rainforest of eastern Venezuela (Briggs 290). There is a stress on inequality as demonstrated through Briggs’ quotation, “the couple spent some 20 days traveling with sick children, seeking help, comforting them, and providing care, in addition to the painful work of lamentation and burial” (294). Without being provided with proper knowledge, as well as, the means for efficient health care, an extensive amount of debt emerges, spending money on gas, food, and other materials for long journeys to different doctors questioning their child’s sickness (Briggs 294). Ultimately, suffering is elevated through such trials and tribulations, many of which could be avoided by proper means of communication in health care