Henrietta Lacks, the “Patient”
HeLa cells made history beyond polio vaccines and outer space experiments. In Rebecca Skloot’s bestseller, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” HeLa cells went beyond just the successful research, cures, and treatments - they told the story of the Lacks family, and the unethical behaviors in the medical field of the 1950s. Henrietta Lacks was treated as a research subject, rather than just as a patient. Her physicians unethically withheld information relating to informed consent, and uses of her biospecimen, while sharing her private information. They ignored her rights of voluntary choice, disrespected her confidentiality, and lacked communication with both her, and her family, discriminating against her race.
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Patient care is based around the individual- their best interest, treatment, and health concerns. Research is based around furthering knowledge within the medical world, by testing on people, and improving lives for future patients. In Henrietta’s case, she went to John Hopkins with the plan of being treated as a patient only, and was used for research, without education or consent. Making only a small effort to relieve her pain through radiation treatment, the physicians removed cells from Henrietta’s cervix to use in later studies. There is another line blurred, as Spigner, a University of Washington professor makes a point, stating, “The life and death of Henrietta Lacks is a cautionary tale that reflects the inherent contradiction between the stated purpose of medical research to provide benefit to humankind and the reality of blatant profiteering in the name of the advancement of science” (12). Whether the motive behind the research was to improve human health, or to make money, the physicians neglected the real reason Henrietta was there, seeking help as a patient. Their later studies proved to be successful, but the unethical actions behind taking the cells remain just as prominent as the