Is it right for one's life to be manipulated for the use of scientific research or is it just a evasion on the person's privacy. Henrietta Lacks was a African American with cells that intrigued many people, she was diagnosed with cancer leaving her to be cared for at her local hospital, where she would later die due to the extremity of the illness. While at the hospital she was unaware that the doctors there were experimenting on her taking cell samples from her body, to help find a resolution to multiple diseases. The people who examined Henrietta manipulated her and the rest of her family to gain information on her cellular structure to be ahead of others looking to achieve the same objective. Henrietta Lacks cells should have never been evaluated because it's an evasion of her freedom, a danger to her personal health, and cause conflicts. First of all, Henrietta was never told that many scientists were undergoing experiments on her because of her unusual cells, this was kept a secret to prevent her from ever refusing the experiments. While going through a cancer procedure a doctor Telinde who was working on her never mentioned anything about getting samples, “no one had told Henrietta that Telinde was …show more content…
The pain was colossal to her “Henrietta’s body was almost entirely taken over by tumors. They’d blocked her intestines and made her belly swell” (Skloot 83). Ultimately, her body was responding in a negative way due to doctors trying to test her cells by putting he in contact with radium a radioactive material that is deadly. Making someone go through excruciating pain just to test out their body capabilities is an inhumane way to help try to solve other illnesses. In the long run, putting someone's life at risk by inflicting pain is not the right step in the right direction to cure all
During the 1950’s African American’s had a difficult time living in a world where they were seen to be lesser of a human being than what they were. They were treated differently in normal everyday lives as well as in the medical world. Henrietta Lacks was a woman who was greatly affected by this divide between whites and African-Americans. Because of the color of her skin, I believe she was not treated to the best of the doctor’s ability, and instead just used for indirect experimentation. In Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, she gives examples of how African-Americans were treated differently, a few of those include; the conditions of John Hopkins, the African-American medical experiments, and Hector Henry.
Born in Roanoke, Virginia on August 1, 1920, Henrietta Lacks would one day unknowingly be the reason for one of the most important cell lines in medical research. Henrietta Lacks became the source of HeLa cells after her death on October 4, 1951 (aged 31), cells which were the first immortalized cell line in history; immortalized cells are cells that will reproduce indefinitely under specific conditions. While Henrietta’s cells were and continue to be used to treat many illnesses, there was never any consent given from Henrietta herself, or any of her family. To this day, no portion of the billions of dollars made from HeLa cells ever found it’s way to Henrietta’s family. The medical ethics in the 1950’s are very questionable in comparison
Henrietta Lacks Honor Essay “The reason Henrietta's cells were so precious was because they allowed scientists to perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human. They cut HeLa cells apart and exposed them to endless toxins, radiation, and infection. They bombarded them with drugs, hoping to find one that would kill malignant cells without destroying normal ones.” (58)”Throughout the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” there are many examples of how the HeLa cell of Henrietta Lacks provided cellular information and examples that helped mold many cellular discoveries and experiments.
The author is speaking to the concern of her audience just so they can fully understand more about HeLa cells and who Henrietta was and what she went through. The author states in the novel many tings like the treatment that Henrietta got and how the doctors just took her cervix cells without Henrietta knowing. The author also noted in the novel that Henrietta was treated with radiation but later down the road when Henrietta’s cancer spread, they had stopped treating it with radiation because it no longer worked. Along with Henrietta no longer getting the proper treatment, she also had no clue of the doctors experimenting with her cells as well as getting no knowledge of it for the rest of her
The cells had been used to cure polio, and they had been used to research other diseases, such as lung cancer, leukemia, Parkinson’s, and others (Longwill, 2010). Scientists were selling vials of the HeLa cells to other labs all around the world, while Henrietta’s family struggled. Even to this day, not a single member of Henrietta’s family has received any kind of compensation for Henrietta’s contribution to medicine. HENRIETTA 3 Henrietta’s daughter Deborah was angry that the cells were harvested from her
This eventually led to a family member becoming so stressed and worn out from this ordeal that she had a stroke. The publicity could have been wonderful, but the press cared about the cells, and the cells only. The family had to protect the reputation of Henrietta as a person. They did not want her to be remembered solely for having the first immortal cells. Therefore, they did not talk to the press and kept to themselves until they were approached by the right person.
If the doctor would have ask for permission than this would be consider morally correct because nothing would have been violated. If the doctor would of obtain the inform consent of Henrietta and explain to her that her cells could help the researchers with their research for certain diseases, I don’t think that Henrietta would of oppose. Notifying her about the use of her cells would be important because according to our text book, “ the main focus is largely on the privacy of genetic data on the safely of human subject research.” Since they would be using her cells for many different studies by having her consent not only would they have respected her moral values, but also they would of kept her privacy. If everything would have been done the correctly since the beginning, I believe that the government should have the right to regulate the commercial use of such genetic material and information.
However, many find this research unethical because of the method of collecting stem cells. Like Victor Frankenstein’s experiment,
February 6th, 2018 - February 20th, 2018 Afton Buhr, Nina Wilson, Athena Cunningham, Marina Avila Henrietta Lacks- Final Assignment (Group) Script (Due February 20th) (Nina and Afton are doing the basic plot, Mari and Athena are doing essential lessons and takeaways)
While she was in radiation treatment two samples of her cervix were removed, without her permission, one that was healthy and a cancerous one. During this time permission was not required nor customarily sought. These cells from the cervix are what make Henrietta Lacks a contributor to modern research. Those cells are known as the HeLa cell line. This cell line is now being commonly used in biomedical research (Moorhead).
Elie Wiesel writes, “We must not treat anyone as an abstraction.” Rebecca Skloot wrote The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman that grew up on a tobacco farm. Henrietta in her teen years was attracted to a boy named Day her cousin. Day and Henrietta got married and had family.
This is a result of racism, which is essentially the only reason why the Lacks family were not given money for the use of their family member’s tissue. “...careless journalists and researchers who violated the family’s privacy by publishing everything from Henrietta 's medical records to the family’s genetic information,” (Skloot). Not only were the cells taken without Lacks’ permission, but the medical records of the family were published without the family’s consent. None of the publishers view this as a violation of privacy, most likely because the race of the family. “‘Scientists don’t like to think of HeLa cells as being little bits of Henrietta because it’s much easier to do science when you dissociate your materials from the people they come from,”’ (Skloot).
30year old Henrietta Lacks underwent radiation treatment for cervical cancer at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore In 1951. During her treatment, George Gey the surgeon who performed the procedure removed pieces of her cervix without her knowledge and sent them to a lab. Her cells were used to develop the polio vaccine, used in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity. Henrietta’s cells were the first human cells ever cloned, some of the first genes ever mapped. They have been used to create some of our most important cancer
From helping create vaccines to the diagnosis of genetic disease, the cells were very useful in medical research. The existence of the cells was concealed from her family, both to allow the research to go uninterrupted and because the identity of the person behind the cells remained a public mystery. Even after the truth came out, the family did not receive any special medical care or assistance, despite being related to Henrietta, who made many of the medications and medical procedures possible through her cells. This may have been an effort to observe any possible effects that a genetic HeLa presence would have on an individual, at the risk of the well-being of the individual. Stemming from this controversy, debate regarding the moral obligation that individuals have to provide their cells for research has begun.
In my evidence one of the primary ethical justifications for conducting research with human subjects. Human experimentation can be needed to help everyone survive. Without human subjects or human experimentation the world wouldn't have things we need like medicine, cures for diseases, and more. While human experimentation can be bad or non-effective in helping people sometimes; but other times it can work