While we had been discussing and reading about the ethical, legal, and social implications of various different cases throughout the semester, reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks allowed me to see it from a whole new perspective. While I have learned quite a bit from all the discussion, the many assigned readings, and the overabundance of bioethics reference readings, this book truly carried my attention from cover to cover, pulling me into Henrietta’s family while sneakily telling me about Johns Hopkins research discovery of immortal cells. It showed me that ethics and legality aren’t t always be considered together (but they should), and how while ethical concerns should be permanently intertwined with social concerns, they are often
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In a way, Henrietta changed the course of history. Without her, it’s impossible to know if medical ethics would have developed the way that they did. The book covered autonomy, a patient’s right to choose medical treatment, beneficence, informed consent, justice, and privacy/confidentiality and played with how social circumstances affected all these. Autonomy recognizes right to make choices concerning yourself and your body without being coerced. Henrietta wasn’t given this right (to choose her treatment/informed consent), but might have been willing in spirit. As I said, while ethics and laws should be considered together, in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks they were not. Informed consent was not a requirement at the time, but it should be viewed as unethical. She certainly did not want those cancer cells in her body and -had she been asked- probably would not have been against allowing the doctors using them for research (especially because of racial dynamics). In terms of the spirit of autonomy, I think had Henrietta’s family been compensated, especially considering all of the lives saved and improved because of HeLa cells, that the family would have consented in her place. However, paying for tissue cells …show more content…
She was a poor black country woman, which led to her avoiding hospitals (while exhibiting severe symptoms) until her disease was too advanced to be stopped. She had limited medical access (a necessity) because of her color and poverty, she couldn’t afford reliable transportation to a medical center so distant. Her (and her family) suffered anxiety and harm under the hands of white doctors who do not even attempt to explain what was happening to them. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks discusses night doctors, doctors who kidnapped black people for research. That is one large component of the part race played throughout the novel. These instances and others throughout the novel show that though Henrietta’s story strongly affected the course of history, it wasn’t without negative driving elements advancing the medical world. Those elements were of course the principles of social equity that must be acknowledged and then addressed before we can continue that advancement; the class exploitation, racism, gender, and every other form of oppression that infiltrates our public healthcare
In a way, Henrietta changed the course of history. Without her, it’s impossible to know if medical ethics would have developed the way that they did. The book covered autonomy, a patient’s right to choose medical treatment, beneficence, informed consent, justice, and privacy/confidentiality and played with how social circumstances affected all these. Autonomy recognizes right to make choices concerning yourself and your body without being coerced. Henrietta wasn’t given this right (to choose her treatment/informed consent), but might have been willing in spirit. As I said, while ethics and laws should be considered together, in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks they were not. Informed consent was not a requirement at the time, but it should be viewed as unethical. She certainly did not want those cancer cells in her body and -had she been asked- probably would not have been against allowing the doctors using them for research (especially because of racial dynamics). In terms of the spirit of autonomy, I think had Henrietta’s family been compensated, especially considering all of the lives saved and improved because of HeLa cells, that the family would have consented in her place. However, paying for tissue cells …show more content…
She was a poor black country woman, which led to her avoiding hospitals (while exhibiting severe symptoms) until her disease was too advanced to be stopped. She had limited medical access (a necessity) because of her color and poverty, she couldn’t afford reliable transportation to a medical center so distant. Her (and her family) suffered anxiety and harm under the hands of white doctors who do not even attempt to explain what was happening to them. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks discusses night doctors, doctors who kidnapped black people for research. That is one large component of the part race played throughout the novel. These instances and others throughout the novel show that though Henrietta’s story strongly affected the course of history, it wasn’t without negative driving elements advancing the medical world. Those elements were of course the principles of social equity that must be acknowledged and then addressed before we can continue that advancement; the class exploitation, racism, gender, and every other form of oppression that infiltrates our public healthcare