"Cell Lines" and "Syphilitics": A Critical Investigation into Medical Racism, Rhetorical Dehumanization, and Health Genres.

This essay investigates rhetorical dehumanization in the US related to systemic racism, sexism, and classism. While I revisit well-known cases of medical exploitation in the stories of Henrietta Lacks and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, I examine them through a new lens by undertaking a rhetorical analysis of medical journal articles written on them, demonstrating how the genre of scientific writing, with its emphasis on objectivity and neutrality, mitigated concerns about the suffering and mortality of Black Americans and overlooked exploitation in the name of scientific advancement. I conclude with Christina Sharpe's In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, a text that, in contrast to the scientific writing I analyze, provides intimate insights into the lives of people who have been dehumanized by systemic racism.