Hela Cell Research Essay

The medical field has evolved a lot since the 1950’s, nobody could argue against that. We’ve sent people into space, cloned organisms, and discovered a lot about how the human body works. Every one of those momentous discoveries was helped along by the discovery of “HeLa” cells. HeLa cells are named after a woman named Henrietta Lacks who died in 1951. She was not a genius researcher, nor was she a doctor. She was a simple, uneducated, black woman who lived well below the poverty level. She married a man named David Lacks, who she shared a bedroom with throughout her childhood, and gave birth to five children, all of whom still live in poverty. On February 6, 1951, Henrietta went into surgery to have a cancerous lump near her cervix removed, …show more content…
Declaration of Independence says that all men have, “certain unalienable rights…among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As Henrietta’s cells are clearly alive, we must therefore assume that it is well within her rights to say what will be done with the live cells that were taken from her body. This, as the Declaration of Independence says, is obvious, or “self-evident”. Though it is fairly obvious from first hand accounts that Henrietta would have wanted to help people, it is logical to assume she was also want some sort of monetary compensation for herself and her family. Because that never happened, Henrietta’s children still live in poverty. Rebecca Skloot, in her book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” put it this way when talking about Henrietta’s son, Sonny. “the last thing he remembered before falling unconscious under the anesthesia was a doctor standing over him saying his mother’s cells were one of the most important thing that had ever happened to medicine. Sonny woke up more that $125,000 in debt because he didn’t have health insurance to cover the surgery. “ This has happened since. In the Moore v. Golde case, the judge ruled that all individuals have the right to determine what is done to their own bodies. The ninth amendment to the constitution supports this. While firm laws where not put in to place regarding removing cell tissue, the Hippocratic Oath states that doctors must “respect the privacy of [their] patients” and …show more content…
Lawrence Wharton took her cells, gave her cell away to George Gey, and when pharmaceutical companies began profiting from her cells. She signed forms without having a clue what she was signing. The doctors who had Henrietta sign forms did not follow what they were having her sign. Finally, the laws of the United States of America, including the highest law of the land, the Constitution of the United States of America all support the rights of an individual to have a say in what happens to his or her body. However much her cells have helped the medical community, the fact remains that those cells were taken illegally and immorally.