Essay On Henrietta Lacks

1. What was the chief injustice of the book? The chief injustice was the lack of informed consent and privacy violation. The scientific community was largely convinced that the HeLa cells had been donated. In reality, Henrietta Lacks, as a patient at John Hopkins, had not been informed that samples from her cervix were collected, nor had she been asked if she was interested in being a donor (p. 33). HeLa cells made large contributions to science, but they have exclusively benefitted companies (p. 194). Skloot writes that had the Lacks family contacted a lawyer, they would have known that they could “sue on the grounds of privacy violation or lack of informed consent” (p. 198). John Hopkins misled Day when they asked permission for an autopsy, saying the tests might someday help his children; the reality was samples were taken for Gey’s lab, who would continue to distribute, and later sell samples of HeLa cells without the Henrietta or her family’s knowledge or consent. Furthermore, the distribution of Henrietta’s name and photo constitute as a privacy violation. Skloot writes that although it is not illegal for a journalist to publish medical information received by a source, but doing so without the consent or knowledge of the subject’s family to verify …show more content…
Deborah pointed out nobody seemed to remember “this is my mother”, Christoph Lengauer added, “some people know those are the initials of a person, but they don’t know why that person is. That’s important history” (p. 266). Mary Kubicek said that seeing Henrietta’s chipped bright red toenails during the autopsy left her speechless. In all the time Mary had been working with her cells, she had forgotten they came from a live woman, and had not thought of it in that way before (p. 91). Briefly, Henrietta’s “contribution” was