The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Essay Sample)

Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 but she is still alive. The complex story of her life was written by Rebecca Skloot in 2010. The book is based on the story of Henrietta Lacks whose cells were taken without any permission. Even if her cells contribute to many medical advancements, doctors did not respect the patient's rights, ethics, and privacy. The doctors use vulnerable people to conduct research on them. Skloot highlights the central idea by telling about Henrietta Lacks and other cases. It helps to understand the medical conditions at the time. Skloot organized the book in a way to define and understand the different central. Informed Consent and Vulnerability are Omnipresent in the book. Informed consent is medical ethics and legal theory that states that a patient should have enough knowledge to make their own independent decisions about medical healthcare. the condition or state of being vulnerable to assault or harm, either physically or emotionally. Informed consent  Doctors were conducting research on patients in other to find medical advancements. Science research went far by treating unfairly and hiding research purposes from patients. One of The principles of bioethics is to inform the patient. Henrietta’s doctors took her cells behind her back. She was unconscious in the operating room. “Gey took any cells he could get his hands on”(p26). Research has a positive impact on the world we are living in. She died in 1951 from usual cervix cancer. She died without knowing of her cells being alive. The feeling of not Knowing your cells how many people are in the world. Vaccines like the polio vaccine, genetic advancements, and recently the coronavirus vaccines. “HeLa cells grew much faster than normal cells, and therefore produced results faster. HeLa was a workhorse: it was hardy, it was inexpensive, and it was everywhere.” (P73) Informed Consent is Important in order to respect patients and the privacy of an individual. “Though no law or code of ethics required doctors to ask permission before taking tissue from a living patient, the law made it very clear that performing an autopsy or removing tissue from the dead without permission was illegal.”(p67). “Berg didn’t explain how releasing Henrietta’s name to the public would have protected the privacy or rights of her family” (p80). The disrespect for her privacy was unfair and she was also vulnerable. Vulnerability

Henrietta was poor Black Woman. And at the time, there was another tissue the segregation. “Because of this history, black residents near Hopkins have long believed the hospital was built in a poor black neighborhood for the benefit of scientists—to give them easy access to potential research subjects. In fact, it was built for the benefit of Baltimore’s poor.”(p.g 122) Research conducted on Black people was frequent. They were a vulnerable population in the US. For Example the Tuskegee Study. The Tuskegee study was conducted to find how syphilis Killed, from infection to death. They infected hundreds of African-Americans men with syphilis. They were slowly dying even after they realized penicillin could cure them

They hide the main purpose of the research “They were poor and uneducated, and the researchers offered incentives: free physical exams, hot meals, and rides into town on clinic days, plus fifty-dollar burial stipends for their families when the men died.”Doctors took advantage of their situation by slowly killing them. They were also vulnerable as uneducated and poor.   

Skloot talked about many cases for example the Tuskegee study, John Moore… to make the connection between the central ideas. Researchers used Vulnerable people as targets for their own benefits. They did not use the principles of informed consent because they were vulnerable considered uneducated people. The injustice at the time was not considered Injustice.