Southam would perform cancer research on cancer patients by injecting HeLa cells into their arms and examined them for weeks. Although, the cancer patients didn't give him any consent to perform these experiments.
Southam would also look for volunteers to perform cancer research on. The Ohio prison inmates decided to volunteer for cancer research and development. 65 inmates would be injected with HeLa cells into their arms and tumors would grow.
The prisoners were asked why they volunteered and they answered "I believe the wrong that I have done, in the eyes of society, this might make a right on it." (Skloot 129)
This chapter introduced me to the Nuremberg Code, where Nazi doctors were sentenced to death on August 20, 1947 and hung because of the inhumane experiments they would do on Jews.
There was a huge controversy relating Southam's experiments to the Nuremburg trials especially because he would perform these experiments without the patients consent.
It really pisses me off that there was a trend in scientists and doctors that back then they could get away with performing experiments on a live human body and taking cells.
Southam claimed that he had no idea of the Nuremberg Code even though it occurred about a decade prior. Southam would eventually be found guilty but was only penalized by being suspended of his license for a year.
I don't agree and I believe his punishment should have been more severe. If I found out he was injecting cancer cells into me for a mere experiment I would turn him down in a heartbeat! I also don't like how scientists would joke about Henrietta's cells so casually.
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