![]() ![]() In a case like this, you don’t step on a man’s property unless you’d be okay with him stepping on yours. Regardless of the impact, good or bad, it was unethical for doctors to utilize patients without their knowing. Doctors were given the liberty to advance in the medical field without giving credit where it was due, they claimed all of the success. They put their selfish desires first and withdrew a part of a human’s anatomy with them to conclude research and so much more. At the time, doctors, especially those that worked in public or colored hospitals, believed it to be a form of payment for their time and dedication to taking care of them. Skloot brings this doing into question when she mentions how it was common for doctors during this time to utilize “patients from the public wards for research, usually without their knowledge” (Skloot, 2010, p 29). While doing that, this remarkable novel most notably brings attention to one of the biggest controversies in the medical field of all time and questions the ethics behind withdrawing Henrietta’s cells without her consent or acknowledgement of any sort. Through research and close ties with Lacks’ family, Rebecca Skloot wrote a one of a kind novel that honors Henrietta Lacks and her contribution to medical science. HeLa cells were going to revolutionize the medical field. Guy was so fond of HeLa cells upon learning they were able to stay alive in a lab under specific conditions and reproduce at a very fascinating rate. At the time, discovering HeLa cells was like winning the lottery since researchers had been trying to both keep cells alive outside the human body and most importantly, reproduce them. In the case of Henrietta, having HPV caused her cells to mutate- they were able to reproduce at a very fast pace and they never died off. This virus “infects the skin cells in the cervix, it can cause the cells to change and become abnormal” (“Abnormal Pap Smears and HPV,” n.d., para. To doctors and her surprise, Henrietta had a rare case of high risk HPV, “a virus which infects skin cells” (“Abnormal Pap Smears and HPV,” n.d., para. ![]() When Henrietta initially had a pap smear, a cervical screening that checks for any abnormalities in the cervix, her results came back clear. Lack’s cancer was one of a kind, from beginning to end. Lacks’ case is the most prominent among others that happened during her time, her story brings to question the ethics regarding medicine in the 1950s and external sources explain how her case has created a pathway for change in medical ethics today. This is mainly because neither she or her family were aware that her cells were taken from her. Though she is hardly recognized despite having had contributed to science in the most astounding of ways- leading to the development of vaccines, allowing genome mapping to be studied, and helping doctors provide better care for cell culture and more. ![]() Get your price Henrietta Lacks: Medical Ethics ![]()
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