Argumentative Essay: The Nuremberg Code

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a novel written by Rabecca Skloot that outlines the life and story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks and her families struggle to discover the truth. Henrietta Lacks was and African American women who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of thirty. A doctor at John Hopkins Hospital examined Henrietta and a biopsy of the cancerous tissue was retrieved. Henrietta received treatment for her cancer, but the cancer was too aggressive and she soon passed away at age of thirty-one, but her cells continue to live today. Henrietta Lack’s cells were unlike any other humans cells ever examined. The cells were able to grow, multiply, and divide outside of the human body in a lab (Skloot 2010). This was a major scientific discovery. Henrietta’s cells, more commonly known to the public as HeLa, aided in the creation of several scientific discoveries and are still used today. It is because of HeLa we have the polio vaccine, a better understanding of cancer, and cells in general. The cells have even been sent into space and have been exposed to nuclear testing and to toxins (BigPicture). Although Henrietta Lacks’s cells have done a lot good, many ethical issues surround her case such as privacy issues, monetary compensation, exploitation, and cell contamination to name a few. Perhaps the most important and controversial ethical issue in Hennrietta’s case resides around consent, or the lack there of.

Mass genocides have haunted the world in history; millions of innocent lives have been taken due to selfish acts of tyrant governments. During the mid-twentieth century Europe faced a massive genocide that preyed on certain demographics. Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, was the sole mastermind that created the environment of racism, sexism, and the fear of certain religions and lifestyles, which was the underlined reason for the genocide we now know as the Holocaust.

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is the story of Hela cells and the women and family behind them. HeLa cells are the cells that have helped scientists all around the world discover cures and vaccines that have saved thousands of lives. But before they did all those things, they were inside a woman, named Henrietta Lacks, and were taken from her without her knowledge. Her family would not know about her cells until years after her death and millions of dollars in revenue gained from the HeLa cells. At the time doctors did what was considered common practice but did they cross a line? Or were the amazing scientific achievements enough to excuse the violation of personal privacy? Despite good intentions doctors should never have taken Henrietta’s cells without her consent, and furthermore her family deserves compensation for the work those cells have helped accomplish, and the sometimes horrible circumstances they have had to deal with because of the cells.

The main ethical issues in this case is that researches at Johns Hopkins Hospital used Henrietta’s cell in multiple researches and send her cells to other researchers around the world without her family’s consent. Moreover, the Lackes themselves were used in medical research without informed consent, and Henrietta’s medical records were release to journalists without her family knowing.

The Holocaust started in the 1933, when the Nazis and Adolf Hitler took power in Germany. The Holocaust from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned) cause chaos and tragedy for Jewish people. At this time Germany was a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000 people. Nazis thought that they were the most inferior race and no other race was better than the Aryan race. This cause a lot of discrimination and hate against other people based on their beliefs and looks. The Nazis provoked the outbreak of World War II, when they invaded Poland. The Holocaust lasted 12 years and it end it on May of 1945.

With the numerous legal, ethical and moral issues that were highlighted in Henrietta Lacks case, two major ones to note: 1) the Lacks never specifically consented to providing samples of Henrietta’s cervical tissue for research, and 2) Johns Hopkins University releasing Henrietta’s name and medical records to third parties without her or her family’s

Bobette met a research scientist who said he had been working with cells from a woman named Henrietta Lacks, Bobette’s reaction can be seen here, “But Bobette kept shaking her head saying, ‘how come nobody told her family part of her was still alive?’ ‘I wish I knew’ he said. Like most researchers, he’d never thought about whether the woman behind the HeLa cells had given them voluntarily’” (Skloot 180). The research scientist she talked to, along with countless other scientists, had never thought about the woman behind the cells and this is part of the reason nobody ever told the family about the cells. Bobette finally found out about the HeLa cells after twenty-five years of no information and a revolution in medicine caused by her late mother-in-law. But it did not get better for the Lacks family after discovering Henrietta’s cell line. Every time one of the Lackses asked questions about Henrietta’s cells, the professionals would never take time to answer their questions, to help them understand what had happened at Johns Hopkins with the cells, or to explain to the Lackses what Henrietta’s cells accomplished. The doctors did not care about the patients and their families, but more about what was in it for them. The doctors did not look at the situation ethically by not telling the family about the cells. They also violated privacy values, which are now rights. They

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks had cells removed from her body without her permission, since then there have been many changes in the way medical researchers get their information. For example, medical researchers today need to obtain consent from the individuals and the parents of children from whom they are performing biomedical tests on as well as an Institutional Review Board (IRB). In addition, in 1996 the United States introduced (“HIPPA Regulations”) that offer data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information. In the case of Henrietta Lacks and her HeLa cells, her rights and her privacy did not exist, so new policies and laws paved the way to help protect the rights of

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks focuses on many issues that Henrietta and her family have faced over the years resulting from the discovery of HeLa cells. One such issue that was recurrently present was the ethical issue of informed consent, or the lack of it, in the Lacks’ case. In the beginning when Henrietta was first being treated with radium to kill her cancerous tumor, her primary doctor, Dr. TeLinde, took a sample of the tissue and sent it to Dr. Gey, head of tissue

In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by the American author Rebecca Skloot. The life of a woman named Henrietta Lacks is presented to the readers. This African- American woman became the source of many advances in modern medicine. Thanks to her cells many illness were cured and vaccines were made to prevent fatal diseases from affecting the humans. However, the controversy of her story resides in the fact that samples of her cells were taken from her without her permission or her family’s. This opens the debate whether if taking someone’s cells to experiment with is ethical or not.

Rebecca talks about whether or not people should have the rights to their own tissues. She points out two issues, consent and money. In the past there was no informed consent, so the doctors and researchers felt free to use tissues in whatever way they wished, with little concern for patients' rights. Nowadays there is a different system, and it's required by the law to ask for a patient's informed consent.mThe money issue is a question of whether doctors should be required to tell patients if their cells or tissues are going to be used for commercial research, and what rights those donors should have. Later on, “scientists sequenced Henrietta Lacks's genome and made it public, without asking the family's permission” which was just another way in which the family was violated and looked over (Silver). Apparently Henrietta didn't get her rights, and neither did her children. Any way we look at it, if the family had received any benefits from the cells, it

Henrietta Lacks died never knowing the amazing impact that she would have on the growth of humanity. Not only did she not know of the tissue samples that were taken from her, but her family was also unaware of the sampled cells. This came as a surprise to them, and they were understandably angry after hearing how corporations profited from cells taken from their now deceased mother, adding insult to injury. Their discontent with the use of their mother's cells was one of the first of its kind, a new ethical dilemma for a new scientific age. Although I think that the way that the scientists used the HeLa cells was warranted, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks documents how far ethics in medicine has come

The Nuremberg Doctors Trial of 1946 is the preeminent case recognizing the importance of medical ethics and human rights specifically about human research subjects. The defendants in the trials include Nazi leadership, physicians, and investigators prosecuted for conducting unethical and inhumane medical experiments on civilians and prisoners of war resulting in extreme pain, suffering, permanent injury and often death. The Nuremberg Code, borne of these trials, establishes ethical guidelines for human experimentation to ensure the rights of subjects in medical research. Herein, this writer will first identify and discuss ethical dilemmas presented in the Nuremberg case followed by three

On 8th August, 1945, shortly after the end of World War II in May of 1945, the Allied governments entered into a joint agreement establishing the International Military Tribunal for the purpose of trying those responsible for the war atrocities. Whereas some 5,000 Nazi’s were charged with war crimes, the Nuremberg trials were designed specifically to prosecute high ranking Nazi officials with whom the authority for the commission of heinous atrocities rested.

In the tumultuous period leading up to World War II, a series of laws were devised in Nazi Germany that subjected the Jewish people to prohibitory and discriminatory forms of treatment. Although the Jewish people only accounted for 503,000 of the 55 million occupants of the country, Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship preached the incorporation of anti-Semitism into law and practice in order to quell the people he considered to be the enemy of the country.