The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Ethical Analysis

A common thing with aging is the degeneration of muscles and mental health, which may lead to older adults not understanding their ethical and legal rights; however in today’s society it hardly occurs to people that scientist and medical researchers may profit from their tissues and they may not see a dime from what their tissues help make. In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot mentions numerous examples of ethical and legal issues in aging that follows a woman by the name of Henrietta. The most important lesson that is shown throughout the book is the issue of informed consent, which brings about numerous ethical and legal issues. One ethical issue that addresses the lesson of informed consent wrong is profiting from another

However her family had no clue the contributions her mother’s cells did for the medical industry and her family could barely pay for their medication and health insurance, as stated by Deborah Lacks, “I can’t say nuthin bad about science, but I won’t lie, I would like some health insurance so I don’t got to pay all that money every month for drugs my mother cells probably helped make.”(p.256). Secondly it addresses morality which can be defined as “concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong.” How far is morally unethical? It depends on the person that answers and therein lies a problem if morality it different for everyone what can be considered right or wrong. During the 1960s patients were often untold they were being used for research. “Like many doctors of this era TeLinde often used patients from the public wards for research without their knowledge.” (Skloot, 2010, p. 29). The doctors believed that since the patients were being treated for free they had the right to use them as subjects in research. However in today’s society while informed consent is a common practice there are still injustices where patient’s samples are being bought and sold without their knowledge. This is where the problem rises should paying a patient for

During the 1960’s when Henrietta found out she had cancer there was still segregation in America and that meant African Americans were not treated with equality. Certain things that were done to them were not considered legally right, but were deemed medically appropriate. For example the Tuskegee syphilis study which occurred in the 1930’s; “They recruited hundreds of African-American men with syphilis, then watched them die slow, painful and preventable deaths, even after penicillin could cure them.”(Skloot, 2010, p. 50). Also there was the Mississippi Appendectomies; “…unnecessary hysterectomies performed on poor black women to stop them from reproducing, to give young doctors a chance to practice the procedure.”(Skloot, 2010, p. 50). Racism has since been abolished and is now considered discrimination; also it is illegal to do any medical procedure on uninformed patients. However in today’s society like the era before, everyone has their own opinion and although it is legally and socially unethical people can still be bias. Also the patients in the studies did not have informed consent. There are three things in which you need to have informed consent; knowing, voluntary and competency.(10/17/13) They subjects had none of them, “They were poor and uneducated, and the researchers offered incentives…” (Skloot, 2010, p. 50). Things have certainly improved for African-Americans and for the medical field in