We Were Never Just Bodies: The Reanimation, Desecration, and Medical Violence Against Black Women—from Henrietta Lacks to Adriana Smith
“We are not your experiments. We are not your property. We are not your silence.”
—For Adriana Smith, and all who came before her.
What They Did to Adriana Smith Was Not Just Medical—It Was Historical
Adriana Smith should be alive. And even in death, her body deserved dignity. But in a chilling echo of centuries past, her remains were subjected to reanimation and experimentation without clear public accountability, clarity, or consent. What was done to her is being explained as science. But we, as Black people, know better: it is not science when it is theft. It is not medicine when it is exploitation. It is not progress when it desecrates.
To understand the weight of what happened to Adriana, you must first understand that her story does not exist in isolation. Her body was not the first to be tampered with, and if history teaches us anything, it won’t be the last—unless we name it, confront it, and refuse to let silence serve as an alibi.
This is not just about one woman. It is about what Black women’s bodies have symbolized to the medical establishment for centuries: vessels for use, data for extraction, and silence for profit.
Henrietta Lacks: The Cell Line That Changed the World but Erased the Woman
In 1951, a 31-year-old Black woman named Henrietta Lacks entered Johns Hopkins Hospital with cervical cancer. Without her knowledge or consent, her cells were taken, studied, and replicated. They became the first immortal human cell line—HeLa—and launched a revolution in medicine. Polio vaccines, cancer treatments, AIDS research, in vitro fertilization—all built, in part, on her body.
But while white researchers and corporations profited, Henrietta’s family lived in poverty. For decades, they didn’t even know her cells had been taken. They were left behind, nameless in medical textbooks while the world made billions off her biological legacy.
Henrietta was more than cells. She was a mother, a wife, a woman with a laugh so bright her friends called her Hennie. But science didn’t want her humanity—it only wanted her tissue.
J. Marion Sims: The “Father of Gynecology” Who Built His Career on Black Pain
Let’s talk about J. Marion Sims. Revered in white medical circles as the “father of modern gynecology,” Sims is a monument to cruelty. From 1845 to 1849, he performed excruciating surgical experiments on enslaved Black women—without anesthesia. Why? Because the prevailing (racist) belief was that Black people didn’t feel pain the same way white people did.
He experimented repeatedly on women like Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey. They did not consent. They were not treated as patients. They were human test subjects—enslaved, voiceless, violated.
When Sims perfected his procedure, he operated on white women too—but then he used anesthesia. His statue stood for over a century in Central Park until it was finally taken down in 2018. But the pain he inflicted cannot be removed so easily.
Adriana Smith: The Latest Name in a Long, Unholy Line
What happened to Adriana—reanimation, unconsented use of her remains, experimentation without transparency—is not new. It is known. And therein lies the tragedy. Black death has always been a site of opportunity for white institutions. Cadavers of Black people were stolen from graves for dissection. Black inmates were subjected to forced sterilizations. In the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Black men were deliberately denied treatment—just to see what would happen.
Adriana Smith is not an anomaly. She is a reminder. That the ethics of medicine are often contingent upon race. That Black life, even in death, is not given the rest it deserves.
She is a Black woman whose body they claimed for knowledge—because that’s what they’ve always done.
The Medical Industrial Complex Was Never Innocent
We must dismantle the myth that science is neutral. Science is built by people, and people carry bias, power, and ideology. Medical advancements in the U.S. have been forged not just in labs but on the backs of the Black. On the wombs of the poor. On the consent-less, the voiceless, the disposable.
This is not an indictment of science itself—but of how it’s been wielded. When white bodies are protected by privacy, ethics boards, and generational wealth—and Black bodies are carved, extracted, or exposed—it is not innovation. It is desecration.
We Remember, So You Can’t Pretend You Didn’t Know
They want us to move on. They want us to believe this is an isolated incident. But memory is resistance.
We remember:
The 19th-century medical schools that robbed Black graves for cadavers.
The forced sterilizations of Black women well into the 1970s.
The radiation experiments on poor Black children.
The lies told to Henrietta Lacks’s family.
The needles plunged into Black skin without anesthesia.
The silence that followed every ethical breach.
And now, we remember Adriana Smith.
We Are More Than What They Take
Black people are not raw material for white advancement. We are not HeLa cells. We are not Sims’ subjects. We are not tragic headlines, hashtags, or anatomical donations without dignity.
We are memory. We are resistance. We are legacy.
And to the institutions who believe they can continue this pattern of theft and exploitation under the guise of research: you cannot hide this behind a lab coat.
We will name it. We will expose it. We will remember.
For Those Reading This
To Black readers: your body is not a site of extraction. You are sacred, whole, and worthy—alive and beyond.
To non-Black readers: if this makes you uncomfortable, good. Sit with it. Then use your discomfort to demand accountability, push for consent-based practices, and question the histories you were taught to revere.
To the institutions: your silence is complicity. And we are done whispering.
In memory of Adriana Smith.
In reverence to Henrietta Lacks.
In honor of Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey—and every Black woman who was never given a name.
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We remember so we can transform.
I will not look away.