Henrietta Lacks Without Her Consent Essay

Chief Justice Rehnquist was the judge who wrote the majority opinion for the court. He reversed the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that a ban on physician-assisted suicide symbolized

rationally related to a state interest, therefore related to the exercise of its police powers.

The scientific community and the media are guilty of viewing Henrietta and her family as abstractions; they did not give the Lacks family a fair trial, they’ve yet to give her family any form of compensation for the success of her cell line, and operated on Henrietta like a science fair project. In the non-fiction narrative The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, it states, “The fact that no one had sued over the growth or ownership of the HeLa cell line, he said, illustrated that patients didn’t mind when doctors took their cells and turned them into commercial products.” (204) This is unfair to the Lacks family because the fraud lawyer, Keenan Kester Cofield, deceived them. Although he is a con artist, he has a wide spectrum of knowledge about law than the Lackses really have about anything; they’ve had little to no education, and they barely knew anything about the HeLa cell line. The media made it seem as if the Lackses

1. Please outline the history of Henrietta Lacks 's tissue cells. Who did what with the cells, when, where and for what purpose? Who benefited, scientifically, medically, and monetarily?

Imagine your mother, sister, wife, or cousin was diagnosed with cervical cancer and you believed the doctors were doing everything in their power to help her. Only later you discovered her cells were used for research without consent and she was not properly informed of the risks of her treatment due to her race. This story happened and is told by Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Skloot use of narrative and her writing style enhances the understanding of the story. Henrietta Lacks was a young black woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at John Hopkins Hospital. Her doctor collected cancerous cells and healthy cells from her cervix and gave them to the cancer researcher, George Otto Gey, who was trying to keep cells alive for more than a couple days. Henrietta endured intense radium treatments, but she still died at the age of 31, leaving her husband and five children behind. An amazing discovery was made Henrietta’s cell were immortal. Racism is prevalent in this book through the limited availability of healthcare, unethical behaviors of the doctors, and how racism affected her family.

Henrietta Lacks was a black tobacco farmer from the south who, in 1950, at the age of 30, she was diagnosed with aggressive cervical cancer. Lacks went to John’s Hopkins medical center for treatment for her cancer. In April of 1951, she underwent surgery to remove the larger tumor on her cervix. Henrietta Lacks, died three days following the surgery. Even though Henrietta Lacks died, her cells from the tumor have lived on and have made a major impact on the biomedical community. The cells that came from Henrietta Lack’s tumor were extremely strange, normal cells go through something called apoptosis, programed cell death, the cells from Lack’s tumor did not go through this process and continued to divided continually. Doctors and lab pathologists

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta, an African-American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line. Told through the eyes of her daughter, Deborah Lacks, aided by journalist Rebecca Skloot. Deborah wanted to learn about her mother, and to understand how the unauthorized harvesting of Lacks cancerous cells in 1951 led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs, changing countless lives and the face of medicine forever. It is a story of medical arrogance and triumph, race, poverty and deep friendship between the unlikeliest people. There had been many books published about Henrietta’s cells, but nothing about Henrietta’s personality, experiences, feeling, life style etc. This caught Rebecca’s

The final violation of ethical principles, in the story of Henrietta Lacks, was the violation of justice. Without the contribution of Henrietta’s cells, many discoveries and vaccines, such as the vaccine that conquered Polio, would not have made their pivotal breakthroughs in biomedical research. Her direct and unknowingly, supportive contribution helped save many people’s lives all over the world. Unfortunately, her named did not receive the recognition it deserved, and her family never received any compensation for profits made from direct use of her

Rebecca Skloot develops the idea that poverty comes with many difficult situations, in the book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks". True, Henrietta and her family were poor, could barely afford their medical bills, and they didn 't get the extended care that they deserved. You will learn how being poor can change your life and what is done with it .

Throughout the article “Organ Sales Will Save Lives”, her thesis statement is clear. Joanne believes that people should be allowed to donate their kidneys even if people believe that it is “morally wrong.” Throughout her entire article she restates her opinion that people should be able to sell kidney’s without consequences. In the article, she states why people believe that it shouldn’t be legal as well as people who do believe that it should be legal. Most people believe that it shouldn’t be legal for one reason, that it is morally wrong. She states several reasons why she believes that it should be legal. She believes that people should be able to donate their organs, as long as they know the side effects and the consequences before following through with the surgery.

Dr. Timothy Quill and three other terminally ill patients filed a case against the Attorney General of New York State claiming violation of the Equal Protection Clauses. The New York State law allowed discontinuation of life-saving treatment for a competent person who was terminally ill, however, it imposed a ban on physician assisted suicide. The district court did not agree but the Court of Appeals reversed stating that they were moreover similar things and the ban was an unequal treatment. The Supreme Court granted a certiorari.

Mary Beth Tinker was a 13-year-old junior high school student in December 1965 when she and a group of students decided to wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam. The school board got wind of the protest and passed a preemptive ban. When Mary Beth arrived at school on December 16, she was asked to remove the armband. When she refused, she was sent home. Four other students were suspended, including her brother John Tinker and Chris Eckhardt. The students were told they could not return to school until they agreed to remove their armbands (ACLU). With their parents, they sued the school for violating their first amendment. When many kids get into high school/middle school, they realize their amendments and what freedoms they have. Mary Tinker decided to express hers. When she was sent home for wearing an

An essential part of modern society relied on trust, especially the trust of doctors and scientists. People had the right to make an informed decision about their bodies and body parts. People had a right to their body parts, both attached and cell samples collected by doctors. The actions that the medical professions made will continue to affect future generations in both positive and negative ways. In the contemporary biographical novel, the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot used logical opinions to argue about the importance of consent to reveal the lack of morality from those in the medical field which continues to persist today. Scientists and doctors made great discoveries with the HeLa cells of Henrietta Lacks. The family of Henrietta Lacks had to live with the aftermath of decisions made by doctors and

After reading this story, I noticed many ethical issues that were brought up. The first issue is informed consent. Henrietta and her family did not give consent to take her cells and sell them. They never signed any forms or verbally explained

In the final months of her life, Annie Lindsell’s struggle to be allowed to die with dignity became front page news, at the end of October 1997; she won a High Court action that allowed her doctor to administer potentially lethal pain-relieving drugs to prevent her from choking to death. This High Court victory opened up the debate on Euthanasia and the laws surrounding physician’s assisted suicide. Like Annie there are many people lying in our nation’s hospital simply waiting to die, since there are nothing humanly possible that can be done to save their lives. Many of them have a debilitating chronic disease that robs them of the simple tasks such as activities of daily living (bathing, eating, etc.) and ultimately their lives. Some of them can’t even breathe on their own. These patients are lying in our nation’s