Henrietta Lacks Ethical Issues

Are the authorities being punished or is another injustice swept under the rug? After multiple different strategies on finding the answers to these questions they were left unanswered. That just shows me how ‘important’ this topic is to the United States. Incarcerated pregnant women are being held as if they’re an alien species. It’s a sad, disappointing case that these women have to face, yes, they have committed a crime and yes, they are serving their time but when it comes to childbirth and being pregnant why are they being treated so indifferently?

The gender-swapped between women and male nurses has been a controversial discussion in society. Leading to this involved the lack of respect, humanity, and fairness. In the case of Evens vs. Principi, a female nurse caught discriminating a male nurse that involves not placing him in her team and giving him the janitor's closet as an " office desk" (Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession). From most stereotypes, it is usually vice versa, however, in this situation, a woman is disrespecting a man because he "doesn't belong" or "threatening to take her authority. " It doesn't make a woman stronger than a man by not letting him to what he is supposed to do; it just makes the women ignorant of the man and his authority.

In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, education plays a substantial role in what occurs throughout the book. Many major events are related to people not understanding what is happening to them. Skloot brings up the topic ’Lack of Education,’ frequently and this affected Henrietta's treatments, and how her family viewed the situation, and how the black community viewed scientist overall. In many occasions lack of education causes a major event to happen, “she didn't write much, and she hadn't studied science in school,”(pg 16) with little education Henrietta had no idea what was wrong with her. Without Henrietta or her family knowing symptoms of certain diseases Henrietta does not go to the hospital till the end.

Her account is also pretty selfish, as she thinks of no one but herself. However, by the second quote, it is obvious that Catherine has changed. She compares herself to the Jews that stopped by her manor, meaning that she is also thinking of others. By the end of Catherine’s narration of her year, she has grown more thoughtful,

Katherine Boo through this book openly projects her biases through the imaginative representation of the lives of people in India. She is ignorant of India’s past and in her portrait of concurrent situations in India, she is openly dishonest .Boo claims that this book is her first hand account of the condition of people of India’s slum but this cannot be fully relied as it is not true representation of real

It is very difficult to think that the parents I work with do not see how others are also victims of the system. In one account, a woman “did not socialize with neighbors, usually kept her curtains closed, and generally did not allow her young daughter to play outside.” This ideology, which has been inherited from the days of Raeganomics, creates distance within the communities we work with and further isolates our clients. However I think that this propaganda worked to discourage the creation of communities and further isolate welfare recipients. When we contract with our clients, we talk a lot about their support system and community supports are really lacking in their lives.

There is diversity even between families and the reason is because we are all different and unique. Health providers must have this in mind when attending people from different cultures. Avoiding to do so might cause mistakes and unfair treatment. Individuals go to health care providers in order to heal, however over the course of history injustice has happened in the health care system. By doing so it affected her personal belief she could have been cared for better, and also they failed to communicate and inform the family thus inflicting pain in them for years.

ethos As the head of “a panel that examined the legal and ethical issues involved in commercial surrogacy and drafted the bill”, Swaraj said that “ ‘ It is a matter of great worry because there were instances where a girl child or disabled child have been abandoned soon after birth’ ” (Lakshmi). The children born into this kind of situation are routinely abandoned, because no one is willing to take custody of them.pathos Second, the contracts surrogate mothers sign do not adequately protect their legal rights, often because they do not understand the contracts they sign (Rama). The industry of surrogacy is big business, estimated to bring in $400 million to India each year (Rama).logos Clearly someone is benefiting from the arrangement, but probably not the surrogate mothers. In addition, the surrogate mothers are not suitably protected from fraud.

Kaplan writes about their uselessness because “letters are repeatedly lost, withheld, seized, misdirected, or misplaced” (1996). She emphasizes Celie`s lack of self awareness. The protagonist is torn by an inner fear which, on the one hand, leads to her desire to tell about the rape and, on the other hand, tells her to stay silenced. The reason behind may be an argument suggested by Madhu Dubey who writes about the protagonist`s “difficulty in imagining herself as a writing subject who can assume a human readership” (2009: 162). The protagonist addresses her first letters to God.

Not only does Hester feel bad for the pain she caused them, but she also has to live with the guilt that she can’t tell them the whole truth. She continues to hide the identity of the father from both Chillingworth and Pearl which makes life much harder for Hester. Hester says “What questions are those? There are so many things in this world that a child must not ask about. what no eye of the minister's heart?

Nonetheless, the consequences of this perspective is normal people like you and me are perceived to see Henrietta Lacks and her family as an object in a museum. The consequences of this could be disrespecting the family like many other writers and scientific researchers did many times before Rebecca Skloot. They saw Henrietta Lacks and her family as a road side-show because of how the family was perceived and privacy of the family was put in danger as a result of the consequences given on how the media and scientific community saw Henrietta Lacks and the Lacks family. Thereafter, Rebecca Skloot conducted herself in a different way she tried to get to know the family. She was actually interested in the story of Henrietta Lacks and her family.

I first heard about Henrietta Lacks story after noticing and advertisement of Oprah Winfrey directing or possibly playing the role of Ms. Lacks. Reading the caption underneath the picture posted I decided to inquire more about the Henrietta Lacks. Ms. Lacks was an African American woman who found out in 1951 after a biopsy, Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The manifestation of the tumor was unlike anything that had ever been seen by the examining gynecologist Dr. Howard Jones. Henrietta Lacks was treated at the segregated John Hopkins Hospital with radium tube inserted and sewn into her body, a standard treatment at that time sewn in her body.

In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, the author demonstrates the harsh realities that many African Americans faced in the medical and scientific field during the mid 20th century. The author shows the unjust practices of this time period through interviews with the Lacks family and medical professionals. These harsh realities are proven when Skloot talks to Henrietta’s family. Henrietta’s husband, Day, explains how they took samples from Henrietta’s body without consent when Skloot writes, “Day clenched his remaining three teeth. "I didn't sign no papers," he said.

The primary ethical issue is that doctors took Henrietta Lacks’ cells without permission. Doctor Gey forgot the patient and focused his attention on the research.  Doctor Gey’s self- interest and quest for recognition allowed him to cross ethical boundaries.   He took advantage of Henrietta Lacks when she was sick, vulnerable and in need of medical attention therefore, one must question his moral judgment.

Henrietta Lacks was thirty years old and found a ‘knot’ on her cervix, which led to her going to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer and treated with radium and x-ray therapy. Some of the tissue was removed from her tumor and sent to George Gey’s lab to be grown in test tubes. Gey was in charge of the Tissue Culture Department at Hopkins and had been researching and experimenting to attempt to make cells to divide so they could have an unlimited supply of cells to experiment on. Henrietta nor her family knew about the tissue sample and neither Gey or Hopkins informed them.