The Unethical Approach to Immortality

Clint Stoeck professor Kelly History 1302 19 October 2012 HeLa The Unethical admittance to Immortality Henrietta Lacks is, one of the greatest contributors medical checkup experience and research in the past times century. Albeit, she neer k newborn of her contribution. In particular, it took twenty years for her family to be informed roughly the extensive do of cells that had been produced, and that would broaden to be produced, to further studies in the best medical interest of mankind. The object lessonity of this situation are hardly obscure and this is what The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot discusses.The blinding use of Henrietta Lacks tissue without her combine, while it was a huge benefit to the medical field of honor and mankind, was extremely unethical and the lack of consent from her and her family stick led to the questioning of the moral standards of the medical field. We see Henrietta Lacks and her family as an exercising of the apa thy that the medical field exhibits during this cadence towards underprivileged people and the lasting personal effects that it can have on society. The ordinal century was a rather confound time for the medical field.We were always advancing and consistently on the verge of new technological capabilities. The medical revolution that transpired during the 20th century began to develop some inadvertent side effects though. Ethics began to get down a back seat to the attainment of medical research and Henrietta Lacks fell dupe to these unethical practices. When she discovered her biopsy results from the pathology lab Epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, point in time I , she had the cancer removed. Henrietta was able to continue her animateness without a problem subsequently the removal and thus continued her life as it was, previously to the cancer.She did non fare that the cancer had essentially been harvested, not richly removed, and utilize to produce the largest sup ply of cells in existence. After Henrietta Lacks death, the use of her cells continued for years. They have been used as a strong suit for in vitro fertilization to polio vaccinations. hotshot of the problems that make this situation questionable is the fact that Henrietta Lacks still died from this cancer. She was not helped but used as a genetical arise without knowing, until she expired. The other half of this situation is how Henrietta Lacks passed remote which in this case, was excruciatingly painful.The doctors viewed her as a miserable specimen and saw no need to examine her further. After Henriettas death, word traveled quickly the George Gey laboratory, where her cells where in the first place cultured. They froze her carcass and used it as a template to continue their research. They began mass producing her cells in a warehouse in Tuskegee at about twenty thousand vials per day. They began to turn a profit withdraw the production and tell not a word of it to Henri ettas family because they would be licitly entitled to a specify of the profits.Not only have they disgraced the body of Henrietta Lacks, they blatantly avoid telling the family about their activities after her death. In 1973, the Lacks family learned of their mothers past situation. They could not grasp the concept that the cells were not immortal but replicated millions of times over. However, it seemed to be that all the brothers, in the family, cared about was receiving a portion of the profits made off Henriettas cells while the sisters were more pertain about how their mothers medical records got into the hands of strangers.During this time, it was an upheld tenet that doctors practiced confidentiality with their patients but they were not legally obligated to do so. This moral plight plagued the twentieth century. Patients were only treated powerful if they were high paying or highly regarded people of white ethnicity while everyone underneath them were seen as borderline guinea pigs for genetic testing. Henrietta Lacks situation and death, along with her familys handling regarding their mother, is a microcosm to the ethics and practices of the twentieth century.People cannot be seen as guinea pigs, but as people that need treatment and help. It is the traffic and responsibility of the medical field to assist high moral and ethical standards and to curb these standards. It appeared that, during the twentieth century, that the very people that medical field worked to help, were treated with little respect. Henrietta Lacks trial by ordeal will serve as a lesson to the medical field in toll of ethics and responsibility towards their patients. 1 . Skloot, p. 8 2 . Skloot, p. 75