Introduction
Henrietta Lacks is known as immortal because her cells are still being used to conduct research. On February 5th, 1951 Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with malignant cervical cancer that was treated with harsh radiation. During her treatment and surgery of the cancer, she had a biopsy that collected a small portion of her cervical cells. Henrietta’s cells were special because they were able to self multiply under the right conditions. Her cells continue to be reproduced and sold all around the world for research. The question is should Henrietta and her family be compensated for her time and cells? This question will be analyzed from two different perspectives, which is the functionalist and a conflict theory perspective. In this
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paper, I will be examining which of the two theories will best explain why Henrietta and her family were never compensated. I believe that the functionalist viewpoint can better answer the question of why Henrietta and her family was not compensated. Ethical Issue and Theoretical Perspective 1 A functionalist viewpoint consist of different groups and parts that work together to construct a working system.
An example of this would be social stratification, which means separation of people based on education, wealth, and power. In this case, Henrietta would fall under a lower level compared to the production companies and even Dr. Gey. There are many people like Henrietta who do not have the high level of education or power. Her function was to be a test subject for the researchers. This role is not extremely difficult to obtain and this is why Henrietta Lack’s role was not as important to society as Dr.Gey. When you compare her to Dr. Gey, he has gone through years of schooling to reach that high level of power and education. This is a form of incentive for him to go through this type of education. If there was no reward for his service there would be no function for a researcher like him. This serves as a function because it creates a system in which people can benefit from one another through each person’s …show more content…
role. In this case the HeLa cells were obtained by Dr. Wharton during her surgery and was later examined by Dr. Gey in his Laboratory. Dr. Gey then discovers that Henrietta's cells were special because they could reproduce continuously under the right condition. This opened a new door for the HeLa cells, because after the sudden discovery the HeLa cells were mass produced. Due to the mass production of her cells many other research facilities were able to obtain and create cures for illness that were running rampant. According to Henrietta Lacks Day One lecture, it shows a short list of all the illnesses that were cured by the HeLa cell line (). In this case we can see how henrita played the role of a donor. The reason she was not given a reward was because she did not go through the important training like Dr. Gey and in turn her role doesn’t provide a big compensation for her. However, a reward for her role would most likely have been free medical care for her time but with the care came the price of donating her cells. The HeLa line was an incentive for Dr. Gey and the manufacturing company to be involved because their role was to conduct research and distribute the cells for future research. This shows how important each person and their function played a role in the advancement of health care. Through the donation of her cells Dr. Gey was able to reproduce the cells in a lab and then have company mass produce it for other scientist to conduct their own research. With the distribution of cells the researchers were able to create an array of cures for disease. This shows how everything functions and flows together as one because of the HeLa cells. Ethical Question and Theoretical Perspective 2 A conflict theory viewpoint states that in any given situation there is a given set of power which is broken up into two groups of simply as the powerful and powerless.
These two group cannot work together because of conflicting distribution of power. These groups can also be called the “bourgeoisie” known as the powerful or the “proletariat” which is the powerless. In this theory both groups are constantly at conflict because one group wants to maintain power while the other group is powerless. In the case of Henrietta the groups that are in power are the companies who are mass producing her cells and the doctors who obtained the cells. And the group who is powerless is Henrietta and her family. This unequal distribution of people comes from henrietta's social status, lack of power, and low wealth. Rebecca Skloot (2011) states in her book that Henrietta's family still lived in poverty even after discovering the multibillion dollar cell production. () And according to Gloria Blackwell from the AAWU, she states that Henrietta's name was not released until the 1970s and even then her family didn’t know that the HeLa cells were still being produced. This conduct continued for 25 years after her death. () According to Rebecca Skloot, in her book she states that Henrietta's husband, Day, consented to the autopsy of her body because he was promised that this will helps his kids one day. However, even after agreeing to the autopsy his kids still lived in poverty and was not ever
once compensated for their mother’s cells. This shows how the powerful stayed in power because they manipulated the family and their inability to understand the extent or the agreement. The companies managed to prolong the release of Henritta’s identity as the donor of the cell. And falsely promised care for Henrietta's children just to obtain a consent for an autopsy. Personal Stance When I look at the functionalist viewpoint for this case, it displays a more logical explanation to why this occurred versu the conflict theory viewpoint. Reexamining the conflict theory, I can understand why her family was not compensated due to the family's social status of wealth, power, and education. However, I feel that the conflict theory viewpoint lacks to explain how this lack of inequality occurred. I understand that the family was not placed in the best position in society but that doesn’t mean that the distribution of power was unfair. From the functionalist viewpoint, it shows that Dr.Gey had more power because of his educational status. When comparing this with Henrietta's status we can tell that she only played a role of donating her cells in which she did not have to work hard to obtain. It’s also important to keep in mind that she was rewarded in a way that equates what her role was in society at the moment. Since she was at the lower end of the spectrum, by receive free medical care she got a type of incentive to donate her cells. This in turned create a chain reaction where the HeLa cells continued down the path where it continued to assist in the discovery of new medical breakthroughs for the general public which is still continuing.
In the year 1951, Henrietta Lacks had her cells taken, for scientific research, without her knowledge. Henrietta Lacks was
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.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta Lacks. In the early 1951 Henrietta discovered a hard lump on the left of the entrance of her cervix, after having unexpected vaginal bleeding. She visited the Johns Hopkins hospital in East Baltimore, which was the only hospital in their area where black patients were treated. The gynecologist, Howard Jones, indeed discovers a tumor on her cervix, which he takes a biopsy off to sent it to the lab for diagnosis. In February 1951 Henrietta was called by Dr. Jones to tell about the biopsy results: “Epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, Stage I”, in other words, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Before her first radium treatment, surgeon dr. Wharton removed a sample of her cervix tumor and a sample of her healthy cervix tissue and gave this tissue to dr. George Gey, who had been trying to grow cells in his lab for years. In the meantime that Henrietta was recovering from her first treatment with radium, her cells were growing in George Gey’s lab. This all happened without the permission and the informing of Henrietta Lacks. The cells started growing in a unbelievable fast way, they doubled every 24 hours, Henrietta’s cells didn’t seem to stop growing. Henrietta’s cancer cell grew twenty times as fast as her normal healthy cells, which eventually also died a couple of days after they started growing. The first immortal human cells were grown, which was a big breakthrough in science. The HeLa cells were spread throughout the scientific world. They were used for major breakthroughs in science, for example the developing of the polio vaccine. The HeLa-cells caused a revolution in the scientific world, while Henrietta Lacks, who died Octob...
At the time the tissue samples were collected from Henrietta Lacks she was an individual capable of deliberation about personal goals and of acting under the direction of such deliberation (Belmont Report, 1979). By collecting the samples without Henrietta’s sufficient consent she was denied of her freedom of choice. She was not given the opportunity for her decisions
The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks is a book about the women behind the scientific revolution of using actual cancer cells to perform cancer research. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who was barely educated and worked as a tobacco farmer. At the age of thirty she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. In Lacks’ time being uneducated, African American, and a woman was not a great mix. They were often undermined and taken advantage of. When Lacks started to become very ill she went to the nearest hospital that would accept black patients. There the doctor, George Gey, misdiagnosed her illness and took a tissue sample without her consent. After suffering through her illness and trying to keep up with her five children Henrietta died
Although she was taken from the world too soon, Henrietta Lacks was a warm hearted woman, and though unbeknownst to her, she would pave the way for the medical field and greatly expand our understanding of one of the nation’s greatest killers; cancer. In 1951 people did not talk about cancer lightly; cancer was a very touchy subject, especially for those who knew they couldn’t receive treatment once they had been diagnosed. When Lacks went to the hospital because of a “knot on her womb” she never thought that it would grow into a full fledge tumor that would end up taking her life. Henrietta lived a simple yet happy life which consisted of working on the farm, loving her husband, and raising children, and she was not going to ruin the lifestyle she knew so well by telling her family that she had cancer; it was just unheard of.
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.
In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot tells the true story of the woman who the famous HeLa cells originated from, and her children's lives thereafter. Skloot begins the book with a section called "A Few Words About This Book", in which a particular quote mentioned captured my attention. When Skloot began writing Henrietta's story, one of Henrietta's relatives told Skloot, "If you pretty up how people spoke and change the things they said, that's dishonest. It’s taking away their lives, their experiences, and their selves" (Skloot). After reading that quote, an array of questions entered my mind, the most important being, "Do all nonfiction authors take that idea into consideration?" Nonfiction is a very delicate and
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
On the concept of feasibility, disputes regarding practicality make reparation impossible. The fundamental definition of “family” yields the question of deciding which members of the Lacks family should be eligible for remuneration. Would compensation conclude with Lacks’s immediate kin or expand to extended family? Her children Lawrence Lacks, Sonny Lacks, and Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman would undoubtedly receive restitution, but the passing of daughters Elsie Lacks and Deborah Lacks complicate the case for direct descendants. Hence, no just method exists to determine which relatives would qualify for restitutions. Additionally another hindrance to compensation arises: who should be held accountable for repaying the Lacks family? The default culprit Johns Hopkins merely freely distributed HeLa to other laboratories, never garnering any profit from the cells. Hundred of research institutions across the globe have received samples of HeLa; thus, tracking down each individual laboratory would be next to impossible. Even if that feat was feasible, what monetary value should be compensated? No single individual or organization has the authority to dictate an appropriate amount that can simultaneously satisfy both family and compensator as well as solve the ethical
“Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art,” said Josef Mengele, comparing science to an art. He was less of an artist and more of a curious, debatably crazy, doctor. He was a scientist in Nazi Germany. In general, there was a history of injustice in the world targeting a certain race. When Mengele was around, there were very few medical regulations, so no consent had to be given for doctors to take patients’ cells and other tests done on the patients’ bodies without their consent. This was the same time that Henrietta Lacks lived. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who went to the doctor because she had cervical cancer. Her cells were taken and are still alive in culture today (Skloot 41). Hence, her cells were nicknamed Immortal (Skloot 41). Although many, at the time, saw no issue with using a patient without consent issue with what?, on numerous occasions since then courts have determined that having consent is necessary for taking any cells. The story of Henrietta lacks is has similarities to an episode of Law and Order titled Immortal, which is an ethical conundrum. Despite this, the shows are not exactly the same and show differences between them. Both of these stories, one supposedly fictional, can also be compared to the injustices performed by Josef Mengele in Nazi Germany.
The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, was a nonfiction story about the life of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Henrietta did not know that her doctor took a sample of her cancer cells a few months before she died. “Henrietta cells that called HeLa were the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory” (Skloot 22). In fact, the cells from her cervix are the most important advances in medical research. Rebecca was interested to write this story because she was anxious with the story of HeLa cells. When she was in biology class, her professor named Donald Defler gave a lecture about cells. Defler tells the story about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells. However, the professor ended his lecture when he said that Henrietta Lacks was a black woman. In this book, Rebecca wants to tell the truth about the story of Henrietta Lacks during her medical process and the rights for Henrietta’s family after she died.
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.
What is privacy? Well, it’s the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people. In terms of information, it is the right to have some control over how one’s own personal information is collected and used. This is a right that has been inherently protected by the U.S Constitution, agreed upon by the Supreme Court, and yet, issues around this very topic arise every day. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author Rebecca Skloot, addresses this issue in her story of the women behind the infamous HeLa cells. Her story shows that although privacy is a right that is inherently protected by the law, situations of injustice can still occur. Examples of this in the book include when Henrietta’s cells were given to Dr. Gey without any consent from Day, the situation in which Mr. Golde’s spleen was sold without his permission, as well as when the Lacks family were recontacted and mislead about the reasons they were tested years after Henrietta’s death.
Stem cell research is a heavily debated topic that can stir trouble in even the tightest of Thanksgiving tables. The use cells found in the cells of embryos to replicate dead or dying cells is a truly baffling thought. To many, stem cell research has the potential to be Holy Grail of modern medicine. To many others, it is ultimately an unethical concept regardless of its capabilities. Due to how divided people are on the topic of stem cell research, its legality and acceptance are different everywhere. According to Utilitarianism, stem cell research should be permitted due to the amount of people it can save, however according to the Divine Command of Christianity, the means of collecting said stem cells are immoral and forbidden.