Henrietta Lacks: Rights Of Individual Rights In Dawn By Octavia Butler

Over the years, medical researchers have violated parts of individual rights. However, the results from the famous study of Henrietta Lacks has provided for significant advancements in medical research. In hindsight, it makes sense to choose to save one hundred people while sacrificing only one individual in sake of the greater good. In the novel, Dawn by Octavia Butler, and an article written about Henrietta Lacks by Jessica L. Stump, correlations become evident between choosing the greater good over the individual. the choice to let an individual suffer somatically is acceptable when the sake of the greater good is in question. In Dawn, the Oankali attempt to preserve the human population from extinction. As the Oankali perform tests on Lilith’s body,

However, in this case, the medical researcher’s committed an ethical taboo by using a person’s corpse without theirs or their family’s knowledge or consent. In the article, “Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa Cell: rights of patients and Responsibilities of Medical Researchers”, written by Jessica L. Stump, the author acknowledges the collapse of individual post-mortem rights. To aid the advancements in medical research, “[her] cells have become the standard laboratory workhorse”(Stump 131) even to this day. As a result of the success of the researchers’ medical findings “the rights of her [own] family, [feel they are being] violated” (Stump 131) because they were never notified of Henrietta’s historical contribution. An Executive Director of the Presidential Commissions Lisa M. Lee, makes a harsh but valid comment in saying that “[t]he benefits of research have to outweigh the risks to the individuals involved” (Stump 131). Without the cures HeLa cells have done as a result of the denial of her individual post mortem rights, we could have faced countless more deaths to date, including the possibility of losing our loved