On February 8, 1951 something incredible to the medical world was discovered, the HeLa cell. It was taken from Henrietta Lacks a patient who had a large tumor and shortly died of cancer after the finding of the large mass in her stomach. Yet, prior to her death on that day of February her physician without her consent took her cervical tissue and gave it to the researching finding that it kept doubling and growing in size making it ‘immortal’. Never had such a significant and powerful cells had been found before. The tissue has been used to stop diseases, HIV/AIDS, understand cancer, these cells have even been through space to see if it was safe for humans.
Despite the fact that these HeLa cells have saved or changed millions of lives there is still one fact that seems to go unnoticed, Henrietta was not aware or gave consent for her physician to cut a piece of her cervical tissue off to put it through labs, fill it with toxins, viruses and tests. She did give general consent for surgery and treatment but not for her cells to be the leading specimen for the a multi billion dollar company. According to the fifth amendment of the United States Constitution “private property shall not be taken for public use,” and naturally her body was private property. Even though written consent for
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She, herself, was a poor tobacco farmer with five children, the family not knowing anything about the cells or mass amounts of money that were being produced from their mother’s cells. The family stayed in poverty for decades with the heartbreaking loss of their mother not knowing that apart of her was being experimented on It hasn’t been until very recent years the family has a say about Henrietta's cells and what's going to happen to