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The Ethical Story Of Henrietta Lacks And Hela Cells

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1951, Henrietta Lacks learned that she had cervical cancer, from which she passed away from at the age of 31. Without the consent of Henrietta or her family, tissue was taken from her body and virtually made immortal at Johns Hopkins. For years, scientists had been trying to breed a cell line on which the medical industry could test in ways that they couldn’t do with the living. Henrietta Lacks was the key that unlocked the door, leading to decades of medical advancements, including helping cure polio, influenza, many other diseases. Her cells even went to space. Just about everyone was profiting from HeLa cells except her own family. Throughout the book we can follow the interesting stories of Henrietta’s children and the scientist who worked with HeLa cells. Many ethical questions were raised and we can engage in the argument that the author poses. Is consent from patients’ necessary to proceed with testing on patients who are unaware of the procedures being done on them? Researches at Hopkins, frequently performed test on their patients, for example injecting them with cancerous cells to see how their bodies would react. Since they saw nothing wrong doctors …show more content…

Back in the day doctors believed that non-doctors could never understand since they didn’t go to college or medical school. In result doctors never explained to patient’s their procedures, and they weren’t forced to by any law. Hopkins was one of the few hospitals that treated black patients. The Lack’s and poor uneducated black families went to Hopkins and put all their faith in the doctors. They had no idea that they were being experimented on. Doctors thought, since patients were receiving quality treatment they thought it was okay to experiment on them in return. The doctors at Hopkins took advantage of their patients because they knew they were uneducated and they wanted to advance their personal

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Although many are unaware of it, scientific ethics have always been a major issue, especially in the United States. This was especially the case of Henrietta Lacks and her family through the early 1950s to present day. Henrietta Lacks hurried into John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland to find out why there was a lump on her cervix. When doctors diagnosed her with cervical cancer, she filled out a form giving consent to let the doctors perform any surgery they deemed necessary. Soon after Henrietta died in October of 1951, her husband, David (Day) Lacks, signed a consent form to let them perform an autopsy on her corpse.

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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

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book that includes her biography, then her childhood to her tragic death; the story of her family over various decades; Skloot’s research and her relationship with the Lacks family, especially Deborah; and the story of the HeLa cells. Henrietta Lacks was known by scientists as HeLa was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951, and then became one of the most important tools in medicine. They were necessary for the development of the polio vaccine, cloning, and much more scientific developments. A doctor at Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without her consent and then sent it down to scientists who been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades. Henrietta's

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Maybe figure out how to duplicate the cells and use it for other drugs that can help people heal better. All through this research and testing Henrietta was left in the dark she didn’t even know that the doctors removed a piece of her cervix for research purposes. She didn’t even receive credit for her cells until much much later. No one knew about the HeLa cells except for the doctors because they were trying to keep it a secret so their project wouldn’t get shutdown by not informing the patient that they’re using their cells. Some would say that the doctors did the right thing and kept the identity of the cells disclosed because later on it led to saving so many lives.

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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.

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The exponential growth of Henrietta's cells allowed scientists to “perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human” (Skloot pg. 58). In hoping to find a cure for cancer, they exposed the cells to a vast number of chemicals, drugs and toxins. Scientists used HeLa to test Polio vaccines, eventually saving millions. The cells allowed scientists to discover that humans had 46 chromosomes, and was used in early cloning efforts.

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What would you do if a doctor took your cells without consent and shortly after, your cells went viral, being sent all over the world to millions of different scientists? Well, I can’t say that Henrietta Lacks lived through this, but I can say that her cells did. Bioethics, the ethics of medical and biological research, has been a controversial issue throughout the U.S. for years. Different laws have been formalized to help tame the fire on the topic of consent and mortality. In the year of 1951, Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer and had too many tumors to count inside her rotting body.

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In 1951, at the age of 31 Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Henrietta was under treatment at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where cells from her malignant tumor were removed. Neither Henrietta nor any of her family members knew about the tissue sample and nor did the Hopkins ever informed them of the situation. Unfortunately after Henrietta’s radiation treatment, her condition continued to worsen and soon she lost her battle to cancer on octomber 4th 1951. Henriettas cells left the Hopkins what they discovered to be known to be the first immortal human cell line.

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In this case study we are presented with the case of Henrietta Lack. Henrietta died of cervical cancer in 1951. After her death the tumor that was remove from her cervix had an unusual finding. The cells fro the tumor continue to replicate despite them being outside the body. These cells that are now known, as Hela cells have become the first immortal human cell line that are able to replicate under laboratory conditions.

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Every year doctors move forward in the chase to find cures for diseases, such as common colds, viruses, and more, thanks to the testing of cells from the infected. Henrietta Lacks’ stolen cancer cells have led to biological advances that have been crucial for several cures. In “A Family Consents to a Medical Gift, 62 Years later,” Carl Zimmer focuses on Henrietta Lacks’ cells, the tension between the National Institute of Health, and the battle to release the experiments to the public all while attempting to choose the side of the companies over the side of the family that was kept outside of the loop. Over 1,500 people die from cancer in a day, 500,000 in a year (Landis).

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Moral code and medical ethics are an essential theme throughout “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” especially concerning the distinction between the right and wrong decisions that were made during the period after Henrietta’s death. Many of the journalists, and some of the doctors and medical researchers lacked the moral code to let Henrietta and her family know of their findings of the HeLa cell, which lead to significantly changing the code of ethics in medicine. Since Henrietta was dead, many researchers and doctors were unaware they were still breaking her confidentiality, and the Lacks family’s confidentiality also becomes an afterthought. Rebecca Skloot says, “It wasn’t illegal for a journalist to publish medical information given

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Jasmine Poole The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is about a women who has cervical cancer that went to the doctor to get better. But instead of just getting better, the doctors took a sample of the cancer cells. The doctor used her cells to help other people with the same cancer get better. In this case, Henrietta and her family didn’t know that her cells were being sold all around the world to reporters/doctors.

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Henrietta Lacks was thirty years old and found a ‘knot’ on her cervix, which led to her going to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer and treated with radium and x-ray therapy. Some of the tissue was removed from her tumor and sent to George Gey’s lab to be grown in test tubes. Gey was in charge of the Tissue Culture Department at Hopkins and had been researching and experimenting to attempt to make cells to divide so they could have an unlimited supply of cells to experiment on. Henrietta nor her family knew about the tissue sample and neither Gey or Hopkins informed them.

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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.

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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.

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