Henrietta Lacks Research Papers

Hela Cells are cancerous cells that came from Henrietta Lacks tumors. Over the past 50+ years the Lacks family’s rights have been violated. The Nuremberg Code states that the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. Without voluntary consent now is illegal but then, it was not. Not only the Lacks family was taken advantage of, but other groups of people have been taken advantage of as well. The right to having privacy has changed with new laws such as HIPAA and a few other laws within the last 60 years.

When Henrietta was taken to the John Hopkins center for a check up, they diagnosed her with cervical cancer. When Henrietta was on the examination table getting ready to go under and into surgery, not a soul told her that

Nothing else. Them doctors never said nuthin about keepin her alive in no tubes or growin no cells. All they told me was they wanted to do a topsy see if they could help my children. And I've always just knowed this much: they is the doctor, and you got to go by what they say. I don't know as much as they do. And them doctors said if I gave them my old lady, they could use her to study that cancer and maybe help my children, my grandchildren” (Skloot 164-165). However Day did not know that they were doing this and the scientists did not care. An autopsy does not involve taking small bits from each of her organs and trying to grow her cells for personal use. Wilbur cut samples from her “bladder, bowel, uterus, kidney, vagina, ovary, appendix, liver, heart, and lungs” (Skloot 90). Gey grew Henrietta’s cells and called them HeLa cells; the immortal cells of the 50s. When a fellow researcher asked for some of the cells, Gey did not refuse to hand them over. Even though Day told Gey not to take samples they did not listen and “sold them for $25 a bottle” (Skloot 5). He did not want the Lackses family to find out what he and researchers all over the world had done, “they would’ve learned that Henrietta’s cells were still alive, that they’d been taken, bought, sold, and used in research without Hennie’s

Prisoners were tested on, “prisoners nationwide were being used for research of all kinds - from testing chemical warfare agents to determining how x-raying testicles affected sperm count” (Skloot 129). Some of the prisoners volunteered to be used as a test subject while many others did not. Southam injected cancerous cells into more than 600 people, mostly cancer patients to begin with, and proceeding with healthy patients to see if it would make a difference; “Since people with cancer seemed to reject the cells more slowly than the healthy people did, he thought that by timing the reaction rate, he might be able to find undiagnosed cases of cancer” (Skloot 130). However, the healthy patients were not aware of what Southam was injecting into their bodies, if the patients were to ask about what he was doing to them, he would say that he was testing them for cancer but in all reality he was injecting cancer into their bodies. The patients that were test subjects were of a variety of diseases and disorders, “one person had advanced Parkinson’s and couldn’t talk, others only spoke yiddish, one had ‘multiple sclerosis’ and ‘depressive psychosis’. Regardless, Hyman wrote, ‘I was informed that consent was not necessary… that it was unlikely that Jewish patients would agree to live cancer cell injections” (Skloot 133). This would not be the only time that Jews were