Lacks By Henrietta Lacks Essay Questions

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. "I just told them they could do a topsy. Nothing else, Them doctors never said nuthin about keeping her alive in no tubes or growin no cells. All they told

Removing Henrietta’s cells without her consent seems to be a very rare scenario and this can tell how the medical community mistreats the Black Americans. A woman of black America origin, Rebecca Skloot managed to surface other different stories of maltreatment directed to the African American community. Blacks in America were taken as people with unequal rights even in a situation like this that talked about right to life. She explained horrific experiences on experimentation of African Americans, stories that were enhanced by fear seen in Henrietta’s relatives refusing to visit hospitals even for necessary treatment. In this regard, the paper will give a response to the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks.

Faden and Beauchamp discuss two definitions of informed consent, which are labeled sense1 and sense2. First, sense1 informed consent is defined as “autonomous authorization”. (Vaughn, p. 191). The key aspect of sense1 is that the patient has the autonomy to consent, or refuse consent. Faden and Beauchamp state four defining characteristics of sense1 informed consent: complete understanding of the consent, individual desire for the consent, intent to consent, and authorizing consent.

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot and examines the life of Henrietta Lacks and her peculiar situation with her mysterious cells. This paper will focus on chapter two in the novel and how it becomes the most important part of the book when it comes to understanding Henrietta’s life story. Chapter two is called “Clover (1920-1942)”, the chapter itself dissects the early life of Henrietta and the challenges she had growing up. In this chapter, it goes over the gender, economic, and racial obstacles that greatly impacted her. It is important to understand the socio-economic conditions that led Henrietta to be treated less than human.

Consent is patients’ rights because they have right to know what is happening to their life which is fundamental value in professional practice (Department of Health (DH), 2001). Dougherty and Lister (2015) state that consent is a patient’s rights to refuse or to accept a treatment. However, Dimond (2010) said that consent is a voluntarily decision which can be given orally, verbally, written or implied for example if you ask a patient to take their blood pressure and they offer their arm. Eyal (2012) also states that consent promote trust in medical procedures that people may seek and comply with medical advice and participate in medical research. Bok (2013) argues that there are problems with the trust-promoting as many patients give consent despite being to some extent distrustful.

Medicine has changed in ways over the years that one might have never thought twice about having anything like that happen to them. People today have increased their knowledge overall about their health situations and how to treat themselves. Patients are stepping up and making decisions about their healthcare choices each day with physicians. And in this process it has turned out to be so important for people to understand what is truly being done before medical treatment is given. We have talked this semester about informed consent and how important it is that our patients understand the meaning of what they are having done.

Informed consent is the process by which the treating health care provider discloses appropriate information to a competent patient so that the patient may make a voluntary choice to accept or refuse treatment. (Appelbaum, 2007)1 It originates from the legal and ethical right the patient has to direct what happens to her body and from the ethical duty of the physician to involve the patient in her health care. In order for the consent to be valid, the patient must be competent to take the particular decision; have received sufficient information to make a decision; and not be acting under stress.2,3 This may be an issue if consent is obtained upon the day of surgery. Most patients will have firmly decided to proceed for surgery. However,

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.

Informed consent is defined as the knowledgeable and voluntary agreement given by a patient. Informed consent protects patient autonomy and endorses trust between the medical community and the patient. If a patient knows that they are lied to, or not told the entire truth, the patient will lose confidence in the medical community as a whole (Eval, 2011). If this non-education does happen, then the patient will not be able to make choices about the end of their life, medially or financially (Piper, nd). Personal integrity is gained when informed consent is used, as the person is making their own choices, not having their family or others make choices on their behalf, when the patient is excluded for the education of the disease (Eval, 2011).

Informed consent must never be assumed. On the other side of the spectrum, informed refusal is the patient's right to deny any of the services recommended. From a legal standpoint, it is important to always document informed consent and refusal to avoid any legal

By Jonas Wilson, Ing. Med. Patient Informed Consent and Anesthesiology Informed consent may be defined as the process whereby a patient has the right to reject or accept therapy after being provided with information about the benefits and risks of that therapy. In more direct terms, informed consent is formulated on the legal and moral grounds of patient autonomy.

In class autonomy was defined as rational individuals being permitted to be self determining. Everybody that is deemed rational has the freedom of choice, especially when it comes to their body and free will. Medical physicians need to honor the patient’s rights and confidentiality in order to prevent violation the patient’s autonomy. To do this the physician always needs to tell the truth, list all options and potential outcomes, and know that the patient has the right to say no. Patient’s can’t be forced into treatment or misinformed.

Here, the patient’s autonomy, human rights, informed refusal and consent come into play (Appelbaum, 2007). Informed consent can be defined as a situation where a patient that is undoubtedly informed wants to participate in the choices and decisions that are being made about his or her health while informed refusal, on the other hand, happens when the risks appertaining to a certain mode of treatment or the treatment itself are rejected based on the risks they pose to the patient’s health and wellbeing in general (Appelbaum, 2007). In such a case, the ethical aspects of deontology and consequentialism are to be explored before the process of decision making

Henrietta Lacks was a thirty-one year old African American who had five kids and married her cousin David Lacks. Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer, the doctors never informed Mrs. Lacks that her cells were to be tested on. The Lacks family was certainly not advised that Henrietta 's cells were growing at an incredible rate. Because of this, the cancer cells were shipped and bought across the world. The last 8 months of Henrietta’s death became a piece of history nobody would ever want to forget.

1. Scientists never found what makes Henrietta's cancerous cells different from other cells. 2. Her story is not important in the terms of how the cells were used, because it has no impact on it.