Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman living in Baltimore. She was a mother of five,...

Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman living in Baltimore. She was a mother of five, who died at the age of 30 in 1951 due to cervical cancer.

Discuss the ethics of using someone’s cells/biological materials without consent.
Was it ethical for doctors to take Henrietta Lacks' cells without her consent?
Should her family have been compensated for the use of her cells?
Discuss how this differs from current procedures relating to organ denotation.

Expert Solution

Use of biological material including cells and tissues have been a subject of concern and importance in the community of scientists since many centuries. Although there were no ethical restrictions and norms regarding use of cell material of patients and participants and concent, credit or compensation were not of priority, many changes were made in the worldwide ethical standards.

The case of Henrietta Lacks triggered many discussions in the field of scientific research and raised questions of just treatment, importance of concent, confidentiality etc.

Tissues of Henrietta Lacks was taken during the diagnosis of her cancer and later were used as a sample for an ongoing research. Use of biospecimens was neither then nor in today's day require any concent from patient as long as the identity of the donor is not revealed, or it was orginally collected for another purpose or no interaction with the person is involved. Ethical restrictions is not feasible in this case as most of the time the donor remains anonymous and also there are very less chance of each sample to become as unusual or of value like that of Henrietta Lacks.

The case of Henrietta Lacks was exceptional and the major reason for ethical norm violation centres around the use of her name initials HeLa against the cell line . There were discussions made regarding this case and proper compensation and concent were followed up with her family.

Hence this case was partly ethically violating and also exceptional.

Thankyou

gladiator answered 2 years ago

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