The lies they tell us.

I was in a coffee shop the other day here in Chicago. A couple I know was reading the local paper. They commented to me how much the internet was being censored in China. I said well that is what the US censored media tell us anyway. Not that I do not think that the Chinese dictatorial elite are not censoring the internet, I do, but I was just wanting to let these people know that the US mass media is one of the most censored in the world. They use this media not just to keep material out of the mass media but also to tell their fairy stories.

Their main story is that we live in a wonderful democratic society where all can have a good life if they only try, where the most industrious rise to the top positions and the wonderful corporations run by wonderful professionals run all in our interests and the wonderful ivy league universities are doing selfless research with not a thought of profit in their mind. And the sickness industrial complex rather than been run by profit addicted bureaucrats is run for our health by selfless wonderful people. And underlying it all racism has long since become a thing of the past. This is their story. It is not true.

Take Henrietta Lacks. How many of us have heard of her?I never did until last week. Henrietta was unique because she had cells that multiplied quickly and easily and did not die. Before getting their hands on her cells, doctors and scientists had trouble culturing human cells. But then Henrietta came along. The profit addicted medical industrial complex were on her like the profit mad vultures they are.

She died at the tragically young age of 31 of a vicious form or cancer in John Hopkins hospital as it was the only that would take her as a black woman. Unknown to her and her family John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore took cells from Henrietta's body. We need to be clear what we are talking about here. They stole parts of her body. Her family did not know of the existence of these stolen cells for twenty years. These stolen cells which belonged to Henrietta and her family were central in the development of the polio vaccine, in-vitro fertilization, cloning and gene mapping. They aided scientists in better understanding cancer and were used to develop drugs for herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia and Parkinsons disease. Today they constitute the most widely used cell line in labs worldwide and have been bought and sold by the billions. They launched a medical revolution and a multi billion dollar industry. Hundreds of millions of people have benefited from Henrietta's cells.

But what about all the profits that were and are being made from Henrietta's cells by the slick suited swindlers of the medical industrial complex. Did her family see any of these? Not a penny. The courts of the employers rule that the family have no rights to them. Many of her family today cannot even afford health insurance. And not only that but the medical racketeers come back time and time again and without telling the family members why and what was and had been going on take more cells and do more tests on Henrietta's family members. The medical industrial complex are addicted to profits and obscene in how far they will go to get these.

Profit is at the heart of this dirty story. But not only profit. So is racism. US history is replete with examples of where black people were used against their will or without their knowledge to be experimented on in the search for cures for disease. The ruling elites in society see black people as inferior and so justify exploiting and experimenting on them in any way they can get away with. During slavery black people were used for experimentation. Black corpses were routinely dug up and shipped to medical schools for research. And in the 1930's in Alabama in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study black men were deliberately left untreated so they could be studied.

There should be a campaign:

#Justice for Henrietta Lacks and her family.

#Take profit out of the health care system.

#Oppose racism. Explain how it makes black peoples' lives a misery and how it is used to make profits.

#For a universal free health care system controlled democratically by its workers and patients.

When we have such a campaign covered in a mass way in the US capitalist media then we will know that we are making progress against the censorship that exists here.

Sean.