Notes

The relationship between black patients and doctors has always been strained by the injustice done by doctors in history. One such example stated in the book is the Tuskegee syphilis studies: They recruited hundreds of African-American men with syphilis, then watched them die slow, painful, preventable deaths, even after they realized penicillin could cure them. …

The truth is the doctors that took Henrietta’s cells were doing it for a good cause. They didn’t do it to ruin her and her family’s life, they did it to help people and save lives. There were no laws prohibiting the taking of one’s cells, in fact in a later Supreme Court of California ruling, it was actually defended. When tissues are removed from your body, with or without consent, any claim to ownership

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.

Henrietta Lacks died never knowing the impact her life would have on the world of medicine. A poor, black woman living in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1950s, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died only nine short months after her diagnosis at the age of thirty-one. The mother of five children, Henrietta most likely died thinking her family would be her legacy. Little did she know her doctor at John Hopkins hospital, George Gey, had taken some of her cells before she died. With Henrietta’s cells, Dr. Gey was finally able to achieve a goal he had been working toward for decades – creating the first line of immortal cells (Freeman). These cells have been used for countless scientific research and have solidified Henrietta Lacks’ place

The book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” brings up a problem in society that was a serious obstacle in the field of medicine in the 1950’s. This problem is that the individual rights of a human versus the general need of humanity. The general need of humanity is much more important than the rights of a human.

In the end, for Henrietta Lacks and her family, it was decided for them that they did not own the cells, regardless of the fact that Henrietta had no idea what was happening with her cells once they left her body. Authenticity is a huge issue in Henrietta’s case because she had no idea what was happening with her cells and that should have been presented to her. Fairness is an important consideration to be addressed, as is it fair that one person can profit off of another person’s cell, but the person’s whose cells they are would never be capable of doing anything with them. Lastly, harms versus benefits

Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 of cervical cancer, leaving behind a husband, five children and some cells taken from her without her permission. These cells continue to revolutionize the scientific field today and have played an integral role in some of the most important advances in medicine: cloning, chemotherapy, gene mapping, the polio vaccine and in vitro fertilization. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks answers a lot of questions regarding the Lacks family, but also poses a number of questions regarding ethics, consent and how far society is willing to go to make medical advances.

Henrietta Lacks case was different than Mississippi and Tuskegee in some ways. In Henrietta’s case the doctors took her cells from her cervix but like in the Mississippi and Tuskegee cases they took them without Henrietta’s permission and launched a multimillion-dollar medical industry after she died. The purpose of taking Henrietta’s cells was to just run a couple tests until they died but they ended up living and growing. Instead of telling Henrietta and her family what they have been doing the doctors kept the discovery to themselves. When the discovery of the immortal cells because known every doctor got their hands on them and started running experiments on them, sending the cells to space, running test on the cells to find a cure to aids and cervical cancer etc…

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 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

Parks advocates that divisions have autonomy in pricing their products and that Joe Tisch, Chief Controller for Sub-Micron would not stand in their way.

In addition, while staying at John Hopkins Hospital, Henrietta was given the best treatment possible and was not treated unfairly in any sense. The treatments that prolonged her life justified her cells being taken. Moreover, now that the cell line has already been commercialized, there is no way to keep track of who owes money and how much they owe. Furthermore, George Gey gave out samples to everyone that asked for them in hopes of furthering science, meaning the cells are literally everywhere. For decades, scientists bought the cells, completely unaware of the person they came from. This is critical because nobody would have known who to compensate, let alone thank for their contributions to science. Do these people deserve to be charged for conducting perfectly legal research and making major health advances? The question of how long compensation should last also arises and there simply is no practical way to answer it. Decades have passed since the cells were taken and a plethora of laws and practices have changed

George has violated the personal rights of Henrietta Lacks. George did not chart that the patient filled out a consent form; therefore, the patient had no idea that her cells were being stripped from her body. Henrietta’s cells were cancerous and used for cancer research. Her cells grew like no one had ever seen which gave Gey the idea to ship them to other researchers. Gey named the cells HeLa so no one knew the face behind the cells. This criminal

While today’s “patients [have] one thing going for them that Henrietta didn't: They [are] alive. And the dead have no right to privacy-even if part of them is still alive,” (Skloot 211) history’s ethical debate regarding medical racism remains a social issue. When patients experience racism, they may be unable to defend themselves if they are incapacitated by medical professionals. Due to patient negligence and bias, the health care provider’s poor treatment breaks the trust of minorities. As shown in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and treatment of Henrietta Lacks, doctors and researchers have failed to inform the participants correctly. Both occurrences highlight medical racism because of the historical maltreatment of minority groups. Now, many

After Gey succeeded to find the immortal human cells, he started to sell HeLa cells without Henrietta’s consent. “Gey sells HeLa cells to researchers in Texas, India, New York, and many others place” (Skloot 84). He did not give any credit to Henrietta. He only told Henrietta that her cells will help many people in the future. “In fact, in the future HeLa cells were contribute into polio vaccine; develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, and Parkinson’s disease” (Skloot 22). Hela cells were also used in cancer treatment and were the first cells that were shot into space.