She was not aware of what scientists had done to her body during her treatment, but if there was a slight chance she had known and declined, a cure would not have been developed.
The discovery of what scientists found in Henrietta Lacks would become the key to creating a vaccine for the polio virus disease. Henrietta’s discovery allowed a field and understanding of virology and a vaccine that would have the potential to eradicate the polio virus disease and further examine the cause of HPV amongst other sexually transmitted diseases that Henrietta had contracted. Despite controversy on the violation of her rights due to doctors taking her cells without consent, once the cells are outside the body they have no ownership and doctors should have no backlash for doing research that gives a better understanding for diseases on humans.
It was a rainy day outside the John Hopkins Hospital where a family would await for their …show more content…
(Oldstone 183) In order to prove the vaccine was successful, the largest epidemiologic study ever was conducted in children. In study #1 440,000 children were given the vaccine versus 210,000 children whom were only given a placebo as the control group. In study #2 there would be 1.8 million children that were the control group as they would remain unvaccinated to test the success of the vaccine given in study #1 and two years later, the NFIP would find out that the vaccine was successful and safe. (Kukaswadia 4) Jonas Salk was able to mass produce and distribute the vaccine with HeLa cells and the NFIP was able to widely test the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine with the help of Gey’s discovery of the first immortal cell line without spending millions of dollars. In fact, the NFIP would not have been able to begin testing the vaccine without HeLa cells as monkeys would die in the process and they needed something that would not be killed by the virus. Another contribution of HeLa cells was being able to test viruses with the cells as was the case with polio that led to the creation of a