What Is The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks: An Ethical Dilemma

Ethical concerns play a huge part of everyday life for health care professionals. The patients of these health care professionals place a lot of faith in the professional’s hands trusting that they know what is best for their current situation. This can stem from knowing different types of treatments to most effectively help the patient to having the knowledge to recommend support for their family and friends that are also affected by the patient’s situation. Henrietta Lacks and the harvesting of her cells brought with it a major turning point in the health field. Not only did it provide many different medical research opportunities and benefits, it also affected the way medical professionals are able to go about practicing their role as

health care providers for these patients.
The World Health Organization defines public health as all organized measures (whether public or private) to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life among the population as a whole.

Public health is concerned with the total system of healthy conditions and healthy people and not just the eradication of diseases. Public health professionals focus on implementing educational programs, developing policies, administering services, conducting research, and regulating health systems to achieve these goals. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks touches on every aspect of exactly what health professionals focus on and how things have changed since the harvesting of her HeLa cells. The biggest impact that the collection of these cells had on public health was the changing and implementation of policies as well as employing educational programs for every health care professional in the field. The most troubling issue from the Ms Skloot’s novel was the lack of ethical concern shown to Henrietta Lacks and her family members. Neither Henrietta nor any of the family members granted the scientists permission to harvest her cells. Although permission was not needed at this time due to the fact she visited a free health care clinic, it has now paved the way to new policies and regulations put into place, most notably the informed

consent.
Informed consent is now one of the foundations of the current United States health care system.

This document can be said to have been given based upon a clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications, and future consequences of a treatment by a health professional. Before this document was put into place, the thought was such that if an individual is receiving free healthcare, the physicians treating them are able to do whatever they want to them without their prior knowledge. This placed the treating physician in a paternalistic mindset, allowing them to decide what is best for their patient based on what could potentially help science and medicine down the road. With a “father knows best” approach, the patients were unable to practice their own autonomy and self-determination to decide what procedures and treatments would be best for themselves and their families. These patients were viewed as lesser of a person because they could not afford healthcare. Because of this, many physicians and scientists alike treated them as if they were lab rats. Informed consent also put forth guidelines for relaying information from patient to provider. This document has made it so that the parties involved are well aware and clearly understand what is going on and what will likely happen as a result. Before this, families and patients were left in a gray area, which allowed the physician to sputter off medical jargon to eventually confuse them and be able to do

whatever they would like.
The public health response to this issue was more than adequate. Implementing educational programs for health care providers to learn more about the ethics that consume their profession is one of the most important policies put into place. It is important for any organization to realize personal as well as business ethics, but it extremely important for the health care industry. This field works and treats so many different people with many different types of backgrounds, not everyone will hold the same beliefs, it is vital to treat each individual with the upmost respect and care. Another response public health had was the implementation of one of the most important documents in the history of health care that gives every patient rights no matter their socioeconomic status. Making sure every patient is able to fully understand their diagnosis and treatment options is critical to everyone that is involved. If there was such a document in place when Henrietta Lacks visited the clinic, would she have declined the physician’s attempt to collect her cells? If she had said no, where would we as a society be medically? Although it would not have helped Henrietta out, it would have definitely changed the way her family was brought up and could have potentially changed the health care environment.
In conclusion, the story of Henrietta Lacks and her HeLa cells had a huge impact on the development of public health care all across the spectrum. Without the collection of her cells it would be tough to say where we as a health care community would be in regard to our educational systems for providers as well as the rules and regulations put forth by such providers. Although what happened to Henrietta and her family was terrible, we were able to learn from it and grow to create an all around better experience for everyone involved.