Your Cell Research Ethics

A patient goes to a local hospital to be treated for a tumor found in his body. The doctor is already getting paid thousands of dollars to extract the mass, and during the procedure, he realizes that the cells from the patient are abnormal. He knows he can potentially make millions of dollars from the cells that extracted. The ethical thing to do before profiting from these cells, is to inform the patient of the cells’ capability. The patient should know that they can help countless people, and that the cells are worth millions of dollars. To this day, doctors and researchers are legally allowed to do any type of research they want to with the tissue removed from one of their patients. They do not have to inform their patients, and can perform …show more content…
Researchers and doctors need to handle their jobin a professional manor, so asking for written consent should be a requirement. Not only is using a patient's cells without their consent unprofessional, but it ruins the reputation of the the doctor involved. In the article Your Cells. Their Research. Your Permission, Rebecca Skloot says, “Tissues from millions of Americans are used in research without their knowledge (Skloot). Once people hear about foul practices within a certain medical facility, they will fear hospitals and procedures. The relatives of Henrietta Lacks and members of the small town she was from rarely visited the doctor, because they afraid that the hospital was performing experiments on them.They saw this as an invasion of privacy and an exploitation of their rights. In the article Your Cells. Their Research. Your Permission, Skloot explains how privacy is extremely important to people. To support her statement, she gives results of an experiment led by Jeffrey Grey, a professor at Des Moines University in Iowa. Grey asked medical students who attended the university to pass their unlocked phones to the person behind them. These students were quick to refuse, claiming that they felt uncomfortable with other people snooping through their personal belongings. This concept can be applied to the study of cells without a patient's consent, especially if these researchers give the cells …show more content…
They frequently choose to only give filtered information to the patients they treat. They hold the power to mislead their patients if they please. In a particular case studied by Dennis McLellan, a local resident of California, John Moore was being treated for hair cell leukemia by physician Davis Golde. Golde was a cancer research specialist at the University of Arizona. Golde examined Moore’s spleen and noticed that his blood cells were out of the ordinary. “The blood cells produced a certain protein that relates to the growth of infectious fighting white blood cells, said Dr. Golde (McLellan). Moore’s red blood cells quickly returned to their normal levels within an abnormal time period. Golde made an amazing discovery, and shortly after began to work with other researchers to form a cell line that would come to be known as “MO”. The only problem was that Golde and his staff were withholding all of this information from Moore. Golde had Moore visit him on multiple occasions over a span of seven years and seemed oddly infatuated with his cells. The doctor’s odd interest led Moore to investigate the situation, and he later found out that his doctor had filed a patent for a cell line called Mo that was discovered using his blood. When he first heard about the news of the patent, Moore was confused and angry he had been lied to. He trusted Dr. Golde to treat his illness, but instead he found out that Golde had been using him