Henrietta Lacks: A Comparative Analysis

Throughout history, the human race has grown smarter and created new things almost daily to help conform to the lifestyle we live in now. Things like cellphones, running water, or simply grocery shopping, things that people nowadays do not realize was not available to our ancestors 300 or more years ago. This has not only happened to improve daily lives but to improve medicine and science. Scientific breakthroughs happen very often but what happens more often is when the cause of these astonishing discoveries comes at the cost of someone else. Although the idea that someone would have to be used or given up for science sounds fabled like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, things like this happen to many different people all over the world who go in for a physical at their doctor’s office, as it has happened to Henrietta Lacks. This was a woman whose cancerous cells were stolen from her body by people she trusted to care for and heal her. Although the two novels listed seem to be immensely different, almost as if they are different levels of health cared gone wrong. They both do coincide with real life stories. New York Times says that many people are automatically enrolled into this scientific research when they donate blood or give bodily samples, even after surgery. Bioethicists’ often take, …show more content…
The problem in letting scientists being the bigger people is to search back for every specimen ever used which will take lots of time, resources, and most importantly