Henrietta Lacks Informed Consent

Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman from the 1900s. She was diagnosed with cancer and had her cancer cells cultured without her consent. These cancer cell lines are known as HeLa cell lines and one of the first immortalized cell lines utilized in current medical research. The fundamental issue with Henrietta Lacks’ HeLa cells is that the researchers never obtained consent for the use of these cells; nevertheless, these cells have benefitted greatly for the area of research. Not only were the cells useful for finding treatments for diseases, but the cells were also utilized in space studies too. It was not until the scientists required DNA data from these cells that they sought out whose cells these belong to. After finding out that

Hence, the question is asked whether or not the HeLas cells belong to the family. From the Radiolab’s podcast “Henrietta Lacks”, the family members didn’t even know of these cells until a few decades after. Furthermore, they weren’t even able to understand the concept of Henrietta Lacks’ cells, and instead thought that there existed clones of Henrietta Lacks. The lack of informed consent is quite evident in this case, and the family member were experiencing emotional pains too as a result.
I believe that the family members should have a say whether or not they have ownership of the cells. Henrietta Lacks’ consent was taken away from her, and so the next best case is to allow the family members to decide whether or not they give consent to the HeLa cells. Similar to the rule-utilitarian, if we were to disregard this case of informed consent, then what’s not to say we can violate someone else’s informed consent for another justifiable reason? This would lead to a slippery slope that could increase the lack of informed consents for patients. However, I, at the same time, understand that this is a very unique case and the cells are doing much more good than harm. So with the view of act-utilitarian, perhaps compromising by allowing the family members to have some legal ownership over the research results that were accomplished by the HeLa cells would be better than the family members having full ownership of the HeLa