The Immortal Life of Political Distrust: The Case of Vaccine Hesitancy among Black Population in the United States

Abstract

In her famous book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot describes not only scientific importance of using HeLa cells in biomedical research, but also the fact that the cells were obtained from Henrietta without her knowledge nor consent. Because the Lacks family was Black the case is repeatedly described as an example of ‘Medical Apartheid’ (Batelaan, 2021). 70 years after Lacks’ death the COVID-19 pandemic reveals that vaccine hesitancy among Black communities in the US may have political roots dating back to slavery. According to Quinn et al., only 40% of Black adults were ready to be vaccinated at the beginning of 2021 (Padamsee et al., 2022) and death rates from COVID-19 are still very high among these groups (Ajasa, 2021). As some scholars argue, the tendency may result from political distrust of Black groups towards official public health measures against the pandemic (Woko, Siegel, Hornik, 2020; Restrepo, Krouse, 2022). Therefore, public health response regarding vaccinations becomes an important field of non-institutional politics where social distrust towards this medical procedure mirrors political distrust of Black communities towards the government. The paper explores the main features of anti-vaccinal movement among Black population in the US and argues that during the COVID-19 pandemic the field of public health may be more politically-sensitive than it had ever been before.