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‘Yeah, Hopkins pretty much screwed up, I think,’ Christoph said.
Deborah bolted upright and looked at him, stunned to hear a scientist—one at Hopkins, no less—saying such a thing. Then she looked back into the microscope and said, ‘John Hopkin is a school for learning, and that’s important. But this is my mother. Nobody seem to get that.’”
This conversation between Christoph Lengauer and Deborah appears in Chapter 32, when Lengauer showed Deborah and Zakariyya HeLa cells under a microscope. This interaction harkens back to the epigraph, where Elie Wiesel states that doctors must never forget the humanity of their patients. Deborah made this very point when she noted that the HeLa cells are her mother, not just objects of scientific study. Significantly, she didn’t deny the scientific importance or value of HeLa, only reiterated their human dimension. While scientists throughout the book worry that more patient consent will result in the death of research, Deborah here demonstrates that remembering the humanity of a patient while understanding the importance of science can coexist. Furthermore, Lengauer enacts the epigraph here and throughout his interactions with the Lacks family. He never forgets that they are people, and freely offers them his time, knowledge, and empathy. He does not condescend to them, and he accounts for the institutional racism that they have endured.
