PSY 305 Week 4 Ethical Principles Essay

Henrietta Lacks was a poor African American that became one of the most vital tools in developing medicines like polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and much more. She was a loving mother of five, wife, sister, and friend to many that was taken on October 4, 1951 at the age of thirty-one to cervical cancer. Henrietta’s cells were taken without her knowledge to develop the first ever immortal line of 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.

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

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 non-fiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, details the happenings and life of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman and tobacco farmer who became a medical miracle in the 1950’s. The book is written in an attempt to chronicle both the experiences and tribulations of Henrietta Lacks and her family, as well as the events that led to, and resulted from, research done on Henrietta Lacks’ cells. Henrietta was a very average African American woman in this period; she had only a seventh-grade level education, and followed traditional racial and gender roles by spending her time has a mother and caretaker, as well as working on farms throughout her life until the involvement of the US in World War II brought her and her husband, “Day” Lacks, comparatively better work opportunities in industrial steel mills. However, after her death in 1951 Henrietta became much more than average to doctors at John Hopkins when the discovered that cells extracted from her cancerous tissue continued to live and grow much longer than any other tissue samples. Further investigation and isolation of these thriving cells led to the creation of the first ever immortal human cell line in medical history. The incredible progress in medicine made possible by Henrietta Lack’s tissue cells were not without downfalls, though. The treatments and experiences received by Henrietta and the effects it had on her and her family demonstrate both racial and gender

First, Dr. Gey decided to take Henrietta Lacks’ (who had cervical cancer) cells without informing her and then sent them to be researched. Henrietta’s cells then became one of the biggest discoveries and

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.

There is a woman who died in nineteen fifty one. However, a piece of her will live on forever. The woman whose cells wouldn’t die. She changed the face of modern medicine and her cells changed all of our lives forever. Her name was Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was a mother, a wife, and the women who would change the world without ever knowing it. She went in to see a doctor and ended up immortal.

Henrietta Lacks, a resilient African American women, had to face a life of disappointing medical treatment because she was perpetuated by society as someone who is not worth saving or treating properly. This was due to the social status of blacks who were segregated and subjected for their skin color in the early-mid 1900's. The story starts off mysterious and provided the reader with a picture frame of what the situation is because in the start there was something uncanny about the cancer cells on Henrietta Lacks’s cervix. The HeLa cells reproduced boisterously in a lab at Johns Hopkins the first human cells ever to do so. HeLa became an instant biological celebrity, traveling to research labs all over the world.

In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot writes about Henrietta’s life and how her cells were taken for medical research. The book progresses by identifying how the medical breakthroughs and the realization that their mother’s cells were taken and experimented on impacted her family, the people around her, and the medical world. Skloot describes the vast amount of medical conditions that Henrietta’s cells, or HeLa cells, have improved or cured, yet the source of the cells is unknown. Henrietta’s personal identity was not associated with the cells. Skloot recalls an incident where biologist George Gey received Henrietta’s cells for research.

By beginning this essay I will talk about a topic inspired by Henrietta Lacks and why her cells were such a big discussion, scientifically and emotionally. It is widely known in science that when we age, our cells die off and create new cells. If we change over time and our cells from five years ago or even two months ago, change too, why the Lacks family was upset the Henrietta’s cells were taken. While her cells became a break through to science, the family still felt there was some wrong doing in the making. People want to have the freedom to decide what is taken from them with permission. It gives us a sense of ethics to what we believe is right or wrong, what is ours to keep and give. I will be writing about the science of our cells and

In the year 1951, an African American woman known as Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer. Unknowingly, her cancerous cells would later be discovered as the first immortal human cells. These cells were then referred to as HeLa by Doctor Gey, who was a tissue expert at the Hopkins Hospital. Her cells were discovered as the first human cells without her ever knowing they had been removed from her body and cultured. Rebecca Skloot, a journalist, and author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks embarked on a journey to discover more about Henrietta Lacks’s struggle, pain, and efforts to get treatment. Henrietta nor her family members were ever told of the cultured cells, but would later find out and be very upset. They would be shocked

Henrietta Lacks was a “mother of five who died of cervical cancer at only thirty-one years of age” (Gabbay). When she passed away the doctors at John Hopkins asked her husband,

The medical community did not explain to or inform the Lacks family of the HeLa cells; along the way the scientists altogether forgot that Henrietta and her family were not abstractions but actual people. The family felt that this was unethical; they felt their mother was robbed and taken advantage of. Despite the spread of HeLa cells and the whirlwind of new research that followed, there were no recent news or stories about “the birth of the amazing HeLa cell line” (Skloot 58). In the beginning, when Gey had kept the origin of the cells- or Henrietta - a secret, no one knew where the cells had came from and no one cared to ask.

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, was a nonfiction story about the life of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Henrietta did not know that her doctor took a sample of her cancer cells a few months before she died. “Henrietta cells that called HeLa were the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory” (Skloot 22). In fact, the cells from her cervix are the most important advances in medical research. Rebecca was interested to write this story because she was anxious with the story of HeLa cells. When she was in biology class, her professor named Donald Defler gave a lecture about cells. Defler tells the story about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells. However, the professor ended his