FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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LOS ANGELES – A community college here has chosen The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, for its “one college, one book” program. This is turning into an opportunity to talk with students about communism as well as racism.
The book is about a 31-year-old black worker who died of cancer in Baltimore in 1951. Cancer cells were removed from her body, without anyone’s permission. They turned out to reproduce like crazy in a laboratory.
This is very unusual. So her “immortal” cells have been used ever since in medical research and pharmaceutical production. Drug companies have literally made billions off Henrietta’s cells.
Meanwhile the black workers in her family have had a bitter struggle against racist super-exploitation. They got nothing from the hospital or the drug companies. Most have had very little access to health care.
Some teachers are assigning the book to classes. Others are organizing discussions and showing films related to racism and health care.
As part of this program, a teacher volunteered to lead a discussion about the “Epilogue.” Four students and two other faculty members attended.
In this chapter, the author talks about two interrelated questions about medical research today: consent and money. Who owns the rights to tissues removed from a person for medical reasons (while alive) or for an autopsy?
In the US the right-wing Christian activists have dishonestly tried to make an issue of what Planned Parenthood does with aborted fetuses. But the capitalists’ legal system has strongly affirmed that your tissues aren’t yours once they are removed. Anybody can sell them and use them to make money.
In the discussion, this made everyone mad. But almost everyone agreed that they would be happy to have their tissues used to help people if nobody was going to get rich off it.
Then discussion turned to a comment by the author: “Like it or not, we live in a market-driven society, and science is part of that market.”
“Is this true?” asked the facilitator. “And if it’s true, do you like it or not?”
Everyone quickly agreed that it was true.
“If you’re a capitalist, you like it,” declared a student from Israel. “And if you’re a communist, you don’t.”
That really opened up the discussion.
Students felt that many workers were tired of capitalism even if they weren’t communists. A student from Guatemala was proud that people there had stood up and marched and gotten the president ousted.
“But look who took his place,” someone said. “They are as bad or worse.” (See article page 8.)
A student from El Salvador vigorously agreed. She talked about seeing a former guerilla leader at a recent graduation ceremony there with an escort of a dozen soldiers. It had made her angry to see this arrogant display of privilege.
“Imagine if the masses in Guatemala had stood up and fought to put themselves in power instead of another batch of capitalist politicians,” said a teacher.
The Guatemalan student got very excited. “I never thought of that,” she said.
The facilitator asked the group to imagine what science would be like in a communist society instead of a market society. That turned out to be hard. The students and most of the teachers did not know enough about either science or communism to form strong opinions.
The Salvadoran student thought that we would use more “natural” or “traditional” remedies instead of the ones developed by pharmaceutical companies today. The Israeli student said that everyone would be able to benefit from science.
Both comments are true but a lot more could be said. When this discussion is repeated next month, it would be good to be better-prepared for this question.
Too soon, the hour was over. People had to go. But not before all the students and one of the teachers got copies of Red Flag.
“I didn’t know what to expect, but this was a great discussion,” one student concluded. Efforts are being made to keep it going.