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Ethical issues presented in the case of Henrietta Lacks
Critical issues present in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
A essay about the immortal life of henrietta lacks
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English Hela Essay Releasing Rebeca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, at an earlier date would have changed some things. On the other hand, other thigs would have stayed the same. Certain events would be very different and others would be no so different. It might seem that what the scientists had done with Henrietta’s cells may have been wrong. If the book was published at an earlier date, her family could have sued the scientists for stealing their mother’s cells and performing many different experiments on them. Many different laws could have been useful at an earlier year if the book would have been published in 1951. Life for the Lacks’ family would not have changed much. They wouldn’t have gained any new supporters
or any more money than what they had gained. Segregation was also a huge factor, so many people, white families, would have felt no remorse for them. However, Henrietta did change the game of science. She was given many different identities in order to keep her race hidden from the public. To conclude, if Rebecca Skloot had released her book earlier, in some ways there would have been very little differences. On the other hand, there would have been very little differences for the lacks’ family.
An abstraction can be defined as something that only exists as an idea. People are considered abstractions when they are dehumanized, forgotten about, or segregated and discriminated against. The scientific community and the media treated Henrietta Lacks and her family as abstractions in several ways including; forgetting the person behind HeLa cells, giving sub-par health care compared to Caucasians, and not giving reparations to the Lacks family. On the other hand, Rebecca Skloot offers a different perspective that is shown throughout the book. Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks describes the trials and tribulations the Lacks family has gone through because of HeLa cells and shows how seeing a person as an abstraction is a dangerous thing.
In the novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author, Rebecca Skloot, tries to convince the audience that her argument regarding, Henrietta and her cells is worth thinking about. Skloot argues that the woman whose body contained these life-changing cells deserved to be recognized. While trying to prove her side of the argument, Skloot uses logos within the novel to emphasize to the audience just how important her cells are, by providing the science behind the cells and their accomplishments.
...and the great scientific achievements that followed were very interesting to me and very well written by Rebecca Skloot. But what made it all so real for me, was the personal story of Henrietta and her family. The frustration of the family and the lack of information that was given by the scientists really made me angry. These people suffered from so much injustice, why did no one made a small effort to explain it to them all? Reading about the health problems The story of the Lackes really visualizes the problems in science before, and the need to resolve them. In the end, the most important lesson learnt is that human tissue used for research shouldn’t be used in such a materialistic way, but it should be handled with in a respectful and ethical way.
Imagine that you were Douglas Mawson, along with two other explorers exploring unknown Antarctica, when everything goes wrong. Douglas Mawson suffered more adversity than Henrietta Lacks and Phineas Gage. Henrietta Lacks is about a woman who died from cervical cancer and her cells were extracted; later to find that her cells were immortal. Phineas Gage was a normal man when an extraordinary thing happened—he had a iron rod go through his skull. Phineas gage didn’t go through as much hardship, but he did go through more than Lacks. Half way through Mawson’s journey, both of his partners died, and it was just him, all alone in Antarctica. So, as anyone could see, Mawson experiences the most adversity among the three figures for many reasons.
People trust doctors to save lives. Everyday millions of Americans swallow pills prescribed by doctors to alleviate painful symptoms of conditions they may have. Others entrust their lives to doctors, with full trust that the doctors have the patient’s best interests in mind. In cases such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the Crownsville Hospital of the Negro Insane, and Joseph Mengele’s Research, doctors did not take care of the patients but instead focused on their self-interest. Rebecca Skloot, in her contemporary nonfiction novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, uses logos to reveal corruption in the medical field in order to protect individuals in the future.
Most people live in capitalist societies where money matters a lot. Essentially, ownership is also of significance since it decides to whom the money goes. In present days, human tissues matter in the scientific field. Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, shows how Henrietta Lacks’s cells have been used well, and at the same time, how they have been a hot potato in science because of the problem of the ownership. This engages readers to try to answer the question, “Should legal ownership have to be given to people?” For that answer, yes. People should be given the rights to ownership over their tissues for patients to decide if they are willing to donate their tissues or not. Reasons will be explained as follows.
Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, depicts the violation of medical ethics from the patient and researcher perspectives specifically when race, poverty, and lack of medical education are factors. The novel takes place in the southern United States in 1951. Henrietta Lacks is born in a poor rural town, Clover, but eventually moves to urban Turner Station. She was diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins hospital where cells was unknowingly taken from her and used for scientific research. Rebecca Skloot describes this when she writes, “But first—though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting sample or asked she wanted to be a donor—Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta's cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish” (33). The simple act of taking cells, which the physicians did not even think twice about, caused decades
..., the name of Henrietta Lacks needs to be introduced to the world since she is the woman who generated HeLa cells, because the name of the person who generated HeLa cells is still unknown. By doing this, her family will be honored and respected by others.
Imagine having a part of your body taken from you without your permission, and then having those cells that are a part of your body grow and are being processed in labs around the world and then ultimately being used for the highest of research. That is what happens to Henrietta Lacks. In the book, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, we see Henrietta Lacks and her families story unravel, the numerous hardships that they faced, and the shocking revelation that their relative cells were being used for research without her consent and theirs.
Ms. Nelle Lee is the author of “To kill a Mockingbird” which is a very famous 20th century novel. Recently “Go Set a Watchman” which is a sequel to her previous book was controversially published. Lee is very old and in bad health. Some people believe she never wanted “Go set a Watchman” published. Other people thought that she did want this book published. One of these people is her lawyer Tonja Carter. Carter is the spokesperson for Ms. Lee since Lee is mostly deaf and blind. The people who believe Lee did not want this book published believe Carter is manipulating her in order to make more money off the new book. To answer the question of “Should the publisher have published the book?” I will rely on Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.’s Defining Moments
...and that this would improve society. The role of this book was to help women shape the way women are in society for many generations.
The story of Henrietta Lacks is a very tragic story. Many ethical issues are present in the story. It is also a very great story, because of all the accomplishments that were possible because of her cell line. The main issue in the story is that the family was never compensated, while other companies, who have no relations to Henrietta and might not even know who she is, are making millions, if not billions, off of her cell line. The family struggled in life while other people were living better and better because they were making money off of Henrietta’s cell line. The family deserved to be compensated, and have still not to this day been paid any money at all.
The first reason I will explain is that the book gave more explicit details. I say this because in the movie they seem to only talk about the great things that these women but, in the book, it talked more about their personal lives. On page 107-108 it talks about what happens to Katherine's husband’s cause of death. “Ultimately, his doctors discovered a tumor on the base of his skull, where it could not be treated.” In the movie, I don’t recall them explaining the death of her husband only that he died. Secondly, in the book they gave us a more detail on the events happening during the time period these women were working in. On page 83 it talks about how people were accused of spying “An engineer was accused of stealing classified National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
4.) In my opinion, I think Henrietta would have given consent to have a tissue sample in medical research if she had been asked. I don’t think she would have understood all of the medical details involved in the testing but I think that she would understand the facts that her cells would someday help others in her situation.
After all, a pole did go through his head, and he was kind enough to share his experience with science. However, he did not volunteer, his experience just happened out of nowhere, it was a one time experience for him, and he was fine in the end. In addition, Henrietta Lacks was not alive while scientists were researching her. She had a rough life before she got cancer, and she sadly lost the battle. Furthermore, sadly multiple people go through cancer, and it is not rare, she did not go through more struggles then Mawson for science research. Both Gage and Lacks did not experience multiple life threatening situations. They also did not lose multiple loved ones such as people and animals. Another difference would be they both did not travel thousands of miles to a different part of the world, then walk hundreds of miles for research. In addition to this Mawson had to face the fear of not knowing if he was going to make it back to where he started. In brief, Gage and Lacks had a great impact on science research, but their experiences could not compare with Mawson's