Jade Sherwin May 14th, 2018
Essay test
Rebecca Skloot’s book “The immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” tells the story of Henrietta Lacks a young mother, a descendant of slaves, whose suffering changed the course of medical research and made life healthier for the rest of us. Henrietta was diagnosed with cancer in numerous ways the Lacks family’s right to privacy was violated. The Lacks family’s right to privacy was violated by people exposing the Lacks’s information “Newspapers and magazines “published articles about Henrietta , one of the pivotal figures in the crusade against cancer.” Henrietta Lacks and her family were finally getting credit for the cells. However, McKusick also published a map of “forty three different genetic markers presented in DNA for Day and two of the Lacks children,” which, it is explained, is a violation of the Lacks family privacy.”. McKusick plans to get “access to their medical records and contact information by using his status”
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The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act also known as HIPAA has set a national standard for the handling of electronically stored medical records. Medical confidentiality protects conversations between a patient and his or her doctor from being used against the patient in court. It is a part of the rules of evidence in many common law jurisdictions. The penalties for violating HIPPA are based on the level of negligence and can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation or per record, with a maximum of $1.5 million per year. Violations can also carry criminal charges that can result in jail time. Henrietta had no privacy or control over what her doctors were saying or doing with her and her cells. Henrietta was treated as an experiment and her information was not even close to confidential. “A miserable specimen. The doctors saw her as something to experiment on, not as a person or human