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The Pros And Cons Of Hela Cells

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Ever since a sample of Henrietta Lacks’ tissue was taken from her, without permission, the world of medicine has evolved, and multiple discoveries have been made. From the polio vaccine to figuring out how many chromosomes each human holds, HeLa cells have had some involvement. But all of this research came from a result of a violation to the medical code of ethics. The question of whether or not all research and findings that were a result of a violation of the medical code of ethics should be destroyed, has become very difficult to answer as we make more and more advances in the medical field. Personally, I believe that the way Henrietta’s cells were collected was a violation, however destroying all of the findings from it would be more detrimental to society than beneficial. The field of medicine has come this far and to take it all back could be everyone at risk. However, I don’t believe a violation to the medical code of ethics should be okay. Any research from the present, or in other words, any research that has not changed modern medicine enormously, like HeLa, should be destroyed.
Almost every single person on the face of the earth has been affected by HeLa cells in some way. For …show more content…

Originally, on Tuskegee University, monkey cells were being used to measure the quantity of antibody developed in response to the poliovirus infection. However, since there were not large enough quantities of the cells, another host cell was needed, which ended up being HeLa. With the immortality of HeLa cells and its ability to be easily infected by the poliovirus, it was an amazing alternative source, from there the poliovirus vaccine was created. Before this vaccine, right around 1953, there were close to 60,000 polio cases in the United States. Destroying the results of the polio vaccination could put society in distress, and maybe even beat the amount of polio cases from

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On October 4, 1951, at 12:51 a.m. Henrietta Lacks died. Shortly after Henrietta’s death, the construction of what would be called the HeLa factory began. It’s sole purpose, to end polio. In February of 1952, Jonas Salk announced that he had developed the world’s first polio vaccine, but couldn’t administer it until further testing.

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They were used to test the first polio vaccine by Jonas Salk in the 1950s. Jonas observed that the HeLa cells were easily infected by poliomyelitis, which caused the infected cells to die. A very big volume of HeLa cells was needed for Jonas' polio vaccine testing. In 1953 spring, a culture factory was made at Tuskegee University to supply labs with HeLa cells. In 1953 HeLa cells were successfully cloned by Theodore Puck and Philip I Marcus at the University of Colorado, Denver.

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All this of this testing on HeLa cells has led to thousands of new pieces of knowledge advancing scientific technology. The amount of HeLa cells that have been produced is so substantial that researchers estimate that if the cells were to be laid down all end-to-end, the cells would wrap around the planet at least three times. HeLa cells made it possible to expose the cells to conditions that wouldn't have been ethical if they were inside a human body. However it is quite strange that exposing cells inside a human body would be unethical, still there was no question of ethics when cells were taken and used from a dead body without the permission of the individual. At the time, the general standpoint of medical science is that cells are taken from an individual and used for research benefit the common good, therefore it is okay to use them.

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This allowed for more experiments to be done which lead to the development of the polio vaccine. As stated by Neil Bhavsar, “the vaccine developed… was only possible because HeLa cells were able to survive in Vitro. The HeLa cells were easy to infect and study, and therefore provided the perfect subject” (Bhavsar). The vaccine itself was developed by a scientists of the name of Jonas Salk. The ability for the cells to be easily infected allowed for the continued development of the polio vaccine.

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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.

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Is it right for one's life to be manipulated for the use of scientific research or is it just a evasion on the person's privacy. Henrietta Lacks was a African American with cells that intrigued many people, she was diagnosed with cancer leaving her to be cared for at her local hospital, where she would later die due to the extremity of the illness. While at the hospital she was unaware that the doctors there were experimenting on her taking cell samples from her body, to help find a resolution to multiple diseases. The people who examined Henrietta manipulated her and the rest of her family to gain information on her cellular structure to be ahead of others looking to achieve the same objective. Henrietta Lacks cells should have never been evaluated because it's an evasion of her freedom, a danger to her personal health, and cause conflicts.

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