WHO Honors Henrietta Lacks, Woman Whose Cells Served Science

[BumRushDaShow]

15. I detest "lawsuit culture" too

But I detest exploitation more.

Right here in Philly, after the MOVE incident and bombing of the organization's home, the remains of some of the children who died in the fire - basically bone fragments that were recovered - were removed for analysis and identification, and then packed away and only brought out as a subject for university courses in anthropology and archeology departments of 2 Ivy League schools.

A Philly museum kept the bones of a Black child killed in a police bombing. Decades later, it’s apologizing.

For decades, the bones sat discreetly in a cardboard box in a Philadelphia museum — the fragmented remains of a police bombing that had rocked the city more than 30 years ago. The city’s medical examiner had been unable to identify the pelvic and femur bones, burned beyond recognition. So city officials turned to Alan Mann, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, to confirm they belonged to Katricia “Tree” Africa, a 14-year-old killed in the bombing.

Mann says he was never able to do so. Rather than returning the bones to her family, the university acknowledged this week that they were shelved away, shuttled between academics and used in videos for an online college course. That revelation — first brought to light this month in a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed and a story in Billy Penn, a local news outlet — has reopened long-standing wounds in Philadelphia, adding a painful coda to one of the most notorious episodes in the city’s history: a violent night in 1985 when police bombed the Black radical group MOVE, razing a middle-class Black neighborhood to the ground.

In a public statement on Wednesday, officials at the university and its museum said they would work to return the remains to the Africa family and had hired lawyers to investigate how and why the bones had been stored away for so long. But Mike Africa Jr., an activist and second-generation MOVE member, said that more needed to be done following the “egregious” saga. “Who would do something like this? And without permission, without consent from the parents?” he told The Washington Post on Thursday. The victims, he added, “were people. They didn’t deserve to be bombed and then put in a lab to become research material.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/30/philadelphia-move-bombing-bones-upenn/

The Heath Director here who had been tasked to eventually deal with the disposition of the remains when it was finally brought up to him, essentially dismissed it and ordered them cremated - again, not contacting the surviving members of the family. He was forced to resign, right in the middle of the pandemic here, this past May -

Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley resigns over mishandling of MOVE bombing remains

By Emily Scott May 13, 2021

Updated 6:40 p.m.

Thomas Farley has resigned as Philadelphia’s health commissioner due to his involvement in the mishandling of remains of the victims in the 1985 MOVE bombing. His departure comes less than a month after news broke that a set of remains, thought to be 14-year-old Tree and 12-year-old Delisha Africa, were held at both the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University for decades and studied by their anthropology and archaeology departments, without the Africa family’s knowledge.

The children were inside the MOVE headquarters when the City of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on the West Philly home, killing 11 people and destroying 61 homes in the neighborhood. Farley’s resignation, which is effective immediately, was announced on May 13, the 36th anniversary of the MOVE bombing. In a statement late Thursday afternoon, Mayor Jim Kenney said he learned of a “very disturbing incident” that happened during the first term of his administration in 2017, where Farley had learned of remains found by the Medical Examiner’s Office that belonged to the bombing victims.

Upon discovering them, Farley had the remains cremated and disposed of, rather than returning them to the family.“This action lacked empathy for the victims, their family, and the deep pain that the MOVE bombing has brought to our city for nearly four decades,” Kenney said in a statement.

https://whyy.org/articles/health-commissioner-dr-thomas-farley-resigns-over-mishandling-of-move-bombing-remains/

It was supposedly later indicated that the ME's office supposedly did not cremate the remains and the city is undergoing an investigation of this and next steps after that incident.

African Americans have been exploited since the time we were fucking dragged kicking and screaming to this country to work "for free" under the threat and use of the whip and other atrocious weapons. We're not zoo animals or pets or entities whose remains should be "put on display" or anything "biological" used for research and/or profit without permission and/or designation by that person or people for that use.

There. Now is that clearer?