What Is The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Essay

The scientific community is culpable of viewing Henrietta Lacks as an abstraction rather than a human being in that they disregarded her right to privacy in extracting her cells

Clearly, these researchers had their own agenda to acquire a medical breakthrough that would change the history of science and contribute to the greater good of society. However, their authority was used in an unwarranted manner to accomplish their goals, regardless of their respectable intentions in wanting to make medical progress. In reviewing these researchers and medical practitioners’ actions during the 1950’s which entails series of unethical behaviors and violation of human right, it develops an essential need to establish guidelines in the attempt to protect patient’s rights and privacy. Furthermore, due to the alternatives that arise throughout this case, there are many possible outcomes to be considered that could have a significant impact on stakeholders if these courses of action are fallowed. These solutions consequences may involve the tentative research, an advance way of life for the Lack’s family, political turmoil, economic health impact and a society whose cells may have similar experience.

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

Racism is immortal just like Henrietta’s cells it will always be around. People would do anything to be the first to discover something. At the end of the day it’s all about the money. The Mississippi appendectomies and the Tuskegee experiments were similar in the way that the government forced treatment upon minorities without consent. Henrietta’s case was different than Mississippi and Tuskegee because the doctor in Johns Hopkins didn’t experiment on her actual body but on her cells without consent. Henrietta’s case the Tuskegee experiments and the Mississippi Appendectomies are all different cases in different locations but serve the same purpose which is to take advantage of poor and uneducated minorities to

Even though, no one knows her name or story, they know the scientific advancements because of her. My definition of the word “history” and “ethics” has expanded to incorporate all perspectives on a particular situation after glancing inward. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective,” which is exactly what Henrietta Lacks has taught me to

Viridiana Munoz The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks SWK 312-1 The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks is about an African-American woman whose cancer cells were harvested in culture by a doctor, Dr. George Gey. Her cells were used for scientific experimentation and have been referred to as immortal. Because there is not much information about Henrietta and her family the author, Rebecca Skloot, wrote the book titled “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” to tell their story.

Born in 1920 Henrietta Lacks, has helped advance the world of medicine in ways that she wouldn't think were possible. In her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot takes us on a powerful journey about an African American women whose cells--were taken without her consent in 1951. This book tackles many issues that existed during this time, for example, racism and many ethical issues. The experiment conducted by the surgeon J. Marion Sims addresses many of the same matters that are presented in the novel written by Skloot. Both of these medical experiments performed on African American women advanced the world of medicine, but they were also seen as unethical and morally incorrect by their peers.

Informed consent should be legally required Having a voice in a conversation means possessing the right or power to make a decision about something. It is shocking how people are still left in the dark not knowing what really happens to their cell, tissues, or blood after they are removed. In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, the author tells the story about the experiences of the Lack’s family and Henrietta’s journey leading to the discovery of her immortal cells which later became known as HeLa cells. The privacy of patients should be confidential and not be shared without their written consent. Doctors’ practices on patients should be changed for several reasons, such as the safety for the privacy of the

When Henrietta Lacks died, her children were sent to different places and had harsh upbringings. They continued to live in poverty for a long time while researchers and research institutions around the world profited from using cells originally from Henrietta Lacks. As an Ashkenazi Jew, I appreciate the isolation of the gene that causes Canavan disease and the fact that I can screen for it should I choose to have children. However, the families who gave their time, resources, and ultimately parts of their children to this research eventually lost their children while Dr. Matalon profited from screening royalties. There should be some measures in place that prevents the harm of research participants, whether financial or cultural, when donating tissue to research. Researchers should fully inform students of their full intentions and ask participants which tests can be performed. To prevent a situation like the one involving the Lacks family, a royalty system should be set up to prevent tissue donors from going into poverty while research institutions disproportionately profit from using their

Henrietta Lacks: an unknown name up until recent years. A name that had been known to the world only as HeLa; The first two letters of a name that belonged to a poor African American tobacco farmer that unknowingly changed science and life as we know it today. Her life has finally been portrayed in a very intimate story that not only does her life some justice but also transcendentally brings to mind the philosophical issues concerning medical ethics both of the past, present, and the future. In a world of constantly evolving medical advancement, science is a pivotal force that propels ideas forward. Although most will agree that the knowledge and cures found are a positive aspect, there is also a necessary evil that is involved, including

A relevant study that derives from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks would be the study of animal testing. In the novel, Skloot refers to animal testing on monkeys and how HeLa helped this situation. Neutralization tests usually used monkeys as subjects, “which were killed in the process.” However, there was no concern for the well beings of the monkeys but rather “monkeys were expensive,” and companies needed a source that was cheaper. This is where HeLa plays a role, as these cells “weren’t limited by space” and could “simply divide until they ran out of culture.” This was an advantage for these research companies, as HeLa cells were inexpensive and could be mass-produced. This topic plays an interest in me because I’ve always been curious

Mankind has always sought to advance its knowledge of the world and to make life easier and better for its citizens. However, some scientific breakthroughs have led to unintended consequences. We as a community have the responsibility of guaranteeing our new technology doesn’t have unintended consequences or become dangerous. That includes allowing obsession and/ or abhorrence of it get in the way of caring for the community. However, in Rebecca Skloot‘s captivating story of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this responsibility goes deeper than the community when a group of overly ambitious doctors do whatever they can to use Henrietta Lack’s cancer cells

The main problem of HeLa cell case is that scientists and corporations seized and took advantage of a cancer patient for their own research. Henrietta’s family only found about the research of their own family member’s cell 25 years after Henrietta’s death. This story highlights the unethical manipulation of someone’s genome in the name of science and humanity. Many would argue that the HeLa cells case is different from other unethical incidence of science going too far, because the HeLa cells has profoundly helped humanity and the progress of science. Personally, I agree with that statement, but the underlying question is: where do we draw the line of giving up individuals’ privacy or genetic makeup for sake of science? Henrietta Lack is probably the most important figure in modern science, but we just don’t know it because of the omission of her identity by researchers and companies, without her

A woman whose cells founded a multi-million dollar industry and provided the world with treatments for diseases such as leukemia, hemophilia, influenza and countless others yet almost no one knows her name. Her true identity was in the shadows for years after her death in 1951. Little did her family know that she lived on through her cell line which is estimated to have a cumulative weight of around 50 million metric tons today. For years after her death no one knew anything more about her than the name given to her cell line: HeLa. When Rebecca Skloot heard of HeLa cells and the woman behind them in her biology class, she was immediately intrigued and proceeded to research her, Henrietta Lacks. She couldn’t find much, if any, information on the woman who supposedly helped so many people. Years later she decided to find out the truth about Henrietta Lacks, and share it with the world. In her pursuit for the truth she conducted over a thousand hours of interviews with not only the friends and family of Henrietta Lacks but with ethicists, journalists, and scientists. This book not only provides the information on the advances in science HeLa cells made but it also calls attention to the woman and the family behind those cells. This book is one of revolutionary scientific discovery and a discussion on the ethics that question the morality of them. The book itself goes into great detail of the life of Henrietta Lacks and HeLa.

In 1979, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research published the Belmont Report. Centered around the concepts of justice, beneficence, and respect for persons, “this report would set forth the basic ethical principles for research involving human subjects” [4]. In 1981, the HHS and FDA revised existing federal regulations governing human subjects research to make those regulations compatible with the contents of the Belmont Report. This implementation of the Belmont Report led to the publication of The Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects by HHS as part 46 of Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)[5]. In 1991, this policy was adopted by eighteen federal agencies