Henrietta Lacks Ethics

Ethical Mistakes Involving Henrietta Lacks Henrietta Lacks will continuously be used to further medical research. When she died in 1951, her cells were isolated creating a cell line called HeLa cells. After Lacks’ death, her cells were cloned and studied without her consent. The cells obtained from her were special because they were unusually strong cancer cells which could grow rapidly and indefinitely in the right medium (“Quick Guide to HeLa Cells,” n.d.). HeLa cells are not bound by the Hayflick limit which states that “the human cell is limited in the number of times it can divide” (“Hayflick Limit Theory,” 2017). While HeLa cells have made great advancements for medicine, doctors should have acted ethically when discovering the immortality of HeLa cells because she did not give consent and companies are making a profit off of her cells. …show more content…
The term “informed consent” did not appear until 1957 but was not actually used until around 1972. This means, that in the beginning of the use of HeLa cells, there were no actual guidelines that said using someones cells without the patients knowledge was illegal. Despite this legal fact, the question is still raised about the ethical issues in this case. Henrietta Lacks was unaware of the cells that were taken from her body. And most importantly, she was not informed that he cells were being replicated and used for research. To this day, HeLa cells are being used in research settings. They have helped develop the polio vaccine, to test toxins, and testing anti-tumor medicines, along with a lot of other uses. The doctors should have obtained consent from Henrietta herself before using her cells. Since she passed away pretty quickly after the sample was taken, they should have gotten consent from the family as