'I was almost forced to do it': One sickle cell patient's story of sterilization, pressure, and regret

As a small child, Pat Wells just thought she had a bad back. That was what the doctor said when her mother took her to the hospital. A bad back. Her mother would rub it with alcohol to help her go to sleep. They didn’t know that she carried a genetic blueprint for a misshapen molecule; that her hemoglobin proteins, which carried oxygen through her body, were catching on each other, forming unwieldy chains, warping the red blood cells they rode in, blocking her circulation.

Now, throughout the U.S., hospitals take a prick of blood from every newborn’s heel and test it for sickle cell disease. Catch it early and you can start on drugs that help you live longer. But in Missouri of the 1960s, mandated screening was still over two decades away.

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