Taking The Least Of You Summary

Although Henrietta lacks and John Moore have contributed a lot to the science community their stories has raised many ethical issues concerning the privacy and consent of a patient. Similar cases might not occur so often nowadays because we have established laws that protect a patient's privacy and acknowledges them before making any

Given the patients were treated for free, using them as research subjects acted as a form of payment. I can see how the doctor’s felt justified to do so. In this case, although un-ethical today, I would have to agree with their reasoning. With a rare-form of tumor on their hands, taking samples from both the tumor and healthy tissue could be deemed of great use for the future. And taking the, seemingly, healthy tissue would only aid in the understanding of how the tumor may have formed in the first place. As a question of ethics, the doctor’s actions are tricky to address. However, if

After undergoing removal of his spleen as treatment for his cancer under Dr. Golde’s recommendation, Moore continued to return for what he was told were follow-up exams. Moore eventually found out that Dr. Golde had used his cells to patent a cell line, so Moore filed suit against him for the profits. As the book tells, after numerous previous trials, the Supreme Court of California ruled against Moore in what would become the “definitive statement on this issue: When tissues are removed from your body, with or without your consent, any claim you might have had to owning them vanishes. When you leave tissue in a doctor’s office or lab, you abandon them as waste, and anyone can take your garbage and cell it.” This meant that Moore no right to any profit made off of his own cells.

Nevertheless, it should be illegal for a doctor or scientist to take tissue samples of patients without their consent, and it should not be used for research unless the donor knows what is being done with their donated tissue. Doctors’ ethics have not seemed to change much since Henrietta’s surgery, and it seems there are seemingly no problems with taking samples without consent, then or now. Throughout The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, lack of ethics can be seen in various situations. The doctor that performed Henrietta’s surgery, Dr. TeLinde, would use people “Without their knowledge” (Skloot), and to hide his

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is full of different perspectives on a significant event. Rebecca Skloot explains the process of african american Henrietta Lacks’s cancer from her point of view along with the doctor’s and the Lacks family’s. Skloot included many issues from the current time period. She heavily addresses the fact that informed consent was not a priority to doctors and scientists and the effect of the abuses that occurred.

Innovations and scientific advances in the 20th century brought about further knowledge of genes and genetics, and later of how diseases interact with human cells. This level of scientific progress was unprecedented, and the medical and biological ethics going along with the science needed time to catch up. From the 1950s with the collection of HeLa cells to the early 2000s with Dr. Catalona, there has been debate over who owns tissue samples taken from human beings. This paper presents an argument for a limited ownership of tissue samples.

Medicine is a scientific creation that allows people to save the lives of others. In some cases, people give a part of themselves while they are still alive or after death to help the lives of other people. So, is it completely wrong that doctors use the tissues and cells from left over procedures or the findings they seem valuable during procedures without consent for research? Is it wrong that patients and families are not compensated from the miraculous research doctors may or not discover? Doctors everyday are saving the lives of people with the help from cell and tissue research. What seems to be the issue is that people are more irritated by the fact they are not being notified or asked for consent before hand. In a lot of cases, most patients wouldn’t allow the use of their tissues to

However, even with progression in the medical community, the question of research and the goals of it are still rocky. I submit that society often feels that medical researchers are often simply out to have a claim to fame or acquire significant money. Many individuals feel more like a test subject rather than a human being that can help benefit others. This stigma plagues the decisions of many patients in medical situations. Therefore, there is a drastic account of mistrust in the medical community from an individual in society. Kristin, you supported this by noting how Skloot (2010) showed evidence that patient’s care less about financial gain from use of their tissue, as they are concerned more with the manner their tissue is used. I

Points of this research that still have me confused is how the hospital disregarded its integrity by allowing this to happen and what the leader planned on doing with the data he was collecting, especially since it wouldn’t be considered ethically sound if he tried to present this data in the future. Ethically, does this mean that there is still room in any clinical trial for utilitarianism or deontology to motivate the researchers? Who knows how many undocumented trials are occurring all over the world, and if that is true, how can we trust that they are acting ethically in nature and not off pure desire to discover new secrets in therapeutics. The Herpes vaccine trial defiantly shows that there is still room for this type of unethical behavior, so does that mean that there is always room for some sort of utilitarian practice in medical research? This is hard to answer because, with the strict procedure that researchers have to follow and the number of people that are involved, it seems almost impossible that there could be room for this kind of thinking. However, the Herpes trial, and probably other undocumented trials, are still finding ways to bring these principles into trials, leading me to believe that if there is enough will, they will find a

In the famous Belmont Report, several guidelines regarding informed consent, assessment of risk and benefits, and selection of subjects in addition to ethical practice and procedure in the area of human research are outlined. The Belmont Report attempts to summarize the basic ethical principles identified by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (Belmont Report, 1979). In particular I would like to discuss the standards for informed consent, assessment of risk and benefits, and selection of test subjects drawn out by the Belmont Report. These three areas of interest are said to be the applications of the general

Eventually, Moore hired a lawyer, who discovered that Golde had used Moore’s Spleen to develop a valuable immortal cell line named Mo. Moore filed a lawsuit, claiming that his bodily tissues were his own property, and that Golde had stolen them. A series of rulings and appeals about his case launched an intense national debate. Golde won because he’s the one who made the cells valuable. He did all of the work. This situation relates to this debate because if the doctor’s would have had ownership over the tissues in the first place, none of this would not have happened. This also proves that the law is on the doctor’s side. If doctors had ownership of the tissues and the right to do whatever they wanted to them, they would not have to go through all this trouble.

These discoveries alone changed the medical world, however he didn’t stop there. In addition, “He succeeded in characterizing and isolating many viruses, including the hepatitis A vaccine in culture.” (Newman, Laura). Before Hilleman, very little was known about viruses, however he changed that. His last discovery was related to the influenza virus and its ability to change.

There are many ethical issues in the healthcare field. These issues range from insurance coverage, senior care, childhood immunizations, beneficence, abortion, medicinal marijuana, honesty and medical research (Fritzsche, D., 2004). Today we will discuss the ethical concerns in only one aspect of heath care and that topic is research (Benatar, S., 2000). Medical research is necessary in order to make strides in health care, introduce new medications, to discover new symptoms and disorders and to test new treatment options for current medical problems. Students of medicine, universities and pharmaceutical companies conduct this research primarily. Much of this research is time consuming and costly, therefore obtaining funding is not

Thousands of people voluntarily enroll in clinical drug trials every year. They are putting their health and safety at risk by participating in a drug trial. One would think they would be doing this to promote medical advancement, but in all actuality, it is for the high dollar amounts they receive for compensation. People that frequently enroll in drug trials are often called “guinea pigs.” The monetary amount people are paid can go as high seventy-five hundred dollars. The more invasive the procedure is the higher the compensation. These “Guinea pigs” are required to pay taxes on the money they do make. (Elliott, 2008)

The art of medicine and curing diseases was not always approached in a scientific way. In fact, many advances occurred between 1919 to 1939, after technological advances allowed scientists to apply the scientific method to medical research. At this time, the ethics of using patients as test subjects either for new medicines or as samples for further testing were not considered. An extreme example of this was the Nazi’s using concentration camp inmates – including children – to run painful and invasive experiments. More modern examples are not so easy to identify as unethical, however. While amputating a leg to develop methods to deal with fractures and war wounds is obviously unethical, harvesting cells to develop a vaccine is not so clear cut, as the disadvantage to the patient is hard to identify. Coming from the various Nazi testing and especially the Nuremberg testing and trials, another code of ethics was developed, called the Nuremberg Code.