Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

“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.

I believe that the Lacks family should without a doubt be compensated for the HeLa cells. There were so many unethical things done to not only Henrietta but here family as well especially with the DNA blood samples that were taken and they deserve the right to be compensated. So many scientist made money off of the cells

These are issues because the cells of Henrietta lack were used to create “immortal” cells that provided a steady supply of cells for medical research and allowed to find cure for multiple diseases, and guaranteed the medical industry millions of dollar when her family his struggling to pay for healthcare. Moreover, researchers at Johns

In the example with the HeLa cells, a great debate was raised when the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was published. The debate centered around the lack of information of where the cells came from, who should have known about the original harvesting, and the lack of compensation for Henrietta’s family once the cells started generating income. Also discussed was the tendency of the medical community to

The Henrietta Lacks Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, who is donating a portion of her book’s proceeds to the Foundation. Henrietta was a poor black farmer whose cancer cells had damaging consequences for her family who today can’t afford access to the health care advances their mother’s cells helped make possible. The Foundation strives to provide financial assistance to needy individuals who have made important contributions to scientific research without personally benefiting from those contributions, particularly those used in research without their knowledge or consent. The Foundation gives those who

Henrietta Lacks was a poor, black woman who died of cervical cancer in the fifties. Her cells were taken from her during surgery, without her knowledge. However, back then there were no laws about informed consent and the mindset was entirely different. Researchers knew little about cells and how they function. Her immortal cells allowed researchers to have an ample amount of resources to be able to study cells and later on develop vaccines and treatments for many diseases. Even though her cells were cancerous, they still shared many basic characteristics of a normal cell, which allowed researchers to learn a lot about a cell’s basic function. Her story explains how medical research has developed and how health care has progressed over the past sixty years.

The public health committee made these vaccines and treatments aware to the public, and there were many articles and stories out about them. These responses were successful in improving the health of the nation, and the advances in medicine we have today would not be possible without it. On the contrary, they were not successful in improving the health of Henrietta or her family. The Lacks family still cannot afford the vaccines or treatments that Henrietta’s cells have made possible today. Their family was taken advantage of because they were poor and illiterate African American family. Their family has had many medical problems that the HeLa cells could have cured; yet they cannot receive any because they cannot afford

Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. Henrietta’s mother passed away in 1924. She was sent to live with her grandfather. Henrietta shared a room with her first cousin David. They had their first son, Lawrence in 1935 when she was fourteen. Then they had their first daughter in 1939, Elsie, who was disabled. Henrietta and David then moved to Maryland and had three more children, David Jr., Deborah, and Joseph.

The scientific community’s careless mistreatment of the Lacks family began with dehumanizing Henrietta’s cells in the very first lab. Generalizing people can especially be easy when one is working with their cells in a lab. The many scientists working on Henrietta’s cells must have found it easy to separate the cells from the person and reduce them to tools to aid them in the task at hand. This view may be harmless when it comes to the individual scientist, and the individual cell, but this view extended to the entire Lacks family and caused them much harm. “Meanwhile, Victor McKusick and Susan Hsu had just published the results of their research in

They thought the doctors were still trying to fix her,” (Skloot 65). Henrietta’s family is still being treated poorly today, being lied to and never got a profit from the cells. “’She’s the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?’”(Skloot 168). In fact, Henrietta herself is one of the major reasons the debate on whether it should be legal to cell organs and cells is a debate today. “HeLa cells as the springboard to launch the first industrial-scale for-profit cell distribution center,” (Skloot 101). Although there are several arguments in the debate over selling body parts, three key arguments deal with the topics of money, helping others, and personal choice. Considering all of the topics, the selling of body parts for profit should be

Henrietta Lacks is woman, whose cells have been used for 63 years after her death in 1951, and will continue to be used as long as they are continue to grow. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who was born in the south, who married her cousin and moved up north. After giving birth to her last child, she finds that she has cancer. The doctors took a sample of her cancer cells without her permission, and now have millions of dollars but the family is still hasn’t received the money they are rightfully entitled to. Many of healthcare and entitlements that are around today, are due to the ill treatment of Henrietta and her family. Still to this day, there is very little known about Henrietta Lacks, even with the book out, and she has

The Lacks family was greatly taken advantage of in the 1950s because of their race, lack of education, and social class. The family believes they should be compensated with a donation given the amount of money Henrietta’s cells were worth. Her cells were sold all over the world for a large sum of money. Additionally, several scientific discoveries were uncovered because of Henrietta’s cells. The new knowledge has no price. However the family is continuing to look for a donation. The Lock’s family should not receive monetary compensation for her donation because it there were laws in place at the time preventing patients from suing hospitals regarding interactions with cells and other things.

Although it is a tragedy that Henrietta’s family cannot afford medical insurance, I believe that they do not deserve financial compensation from the sales of HeLa cells. My primary reasoning for this is because there is no practical way to go about compensation. At the time of when Henrietta’s cells were removed from her body, the goal was not to find profit, but to further cancer research. This is supported by the fact that Alexis Carrel’s claims of creating the “immortal” chicken heart defamed cell culture in general and kept it from being a profitable industry as there was a lack of trust. It is important to note that the cells were technically taken legally at the time, meaning nobody has to compensate the family aside from the moral obligation to do so.

B. Henrietta Lacks was the unwitting donor of the cells that found significant new information and treatment of cervical cancer. She did not have any knowledge that her cells were being preserved and used for research. And consequently, she was never compensated since she did not legally own her cells once

Should these patients be compensated? The answer should always be yes to this question.According to Robert D. Truog, Aaron S. Kesselheim, and Steven Joffe, authors of “Paying Patients for their Tissue: The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks,” “If patients own their tissues, even after removal of the tissue from their bodies, then it follows that they have the right to demand payment when a profitable discovery derives from their tissue.” If doctors continue to shrug the issue off their shoulder, soon enough there will no longer be any patients willing to donate their human body tissue.. Since the 1950’s, people have heard of the wrong that doctors, scientists, and medical researchers did to the family of Henrietta Lacks.. They deserved monetary compensation in some form, but in return they received nothing. This could heavily influence new patient’s decisions to donate their tissue. Patients will feel as if they are the reason doctors and medical researchers are making millions of dollars off their tissue, while they sit around at home struggling to pay their medical