The Renty daguerreotypes constitute early documented Black medical data extracted without consent.

Evidence

As a public health researcher, she was most disturbed by the fact that Renty and Delia, and the other five human beings captured in those daguerreotypes, were being treated as medical specimens. This had not dawned on me until Meredith explained that Agassiz was using their bodies to prove his theory of polygenism, and that the daguerreotypes were therefore one of the first documented examples of Black bodies being used as medical data. … “Agassiz collected data from the seven human beings that were photographed against their will,” Meredith explained. “This was human data that Agassiz and others were studying. And Harvard continues to use them today—people, as data points. It’s sickening.” … This was revelatory to both me and my lawyers, since we had always thought of the daguerreotypes as personal property—but Meredith helped us understand that Renty, Delia, and the other enslaved men and women were a part of an evil scientific experiment to prove white supremacy and there were now protocols in place to protect people from such human experimentation. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 970

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the conceptual reframing of the daguerreotypes from personal property to medical data — a pivotal doctrinal/ethical move in Lanier’s case.
• QUESTION: Which modern research protocols (Belmont Report, Nuremberg Code, informed consent doctrines) would apply retroactively to the Agassiz photographs — and does any court recognize such a claim?