![]() Moreover, the members of the Lacks family were used for the research as well. While the researchers “created enormous wealth for many”, Henrietta’s family could not even afford health insurance (Sharpe, 2010, p. During almost sixty years, Henrietta’s closest relatives were aware neither of HeLa itself nor of the fact that some people were making a lot of money on the research. Although the cells were “omnipresent”, there was not much information about Henrietta by the 2000s: the majority of sources referred to Helen Lane, and the information about the cause and the time of the woman’s death was inaccurate (Skloot, 2010, p. That is why not many people knew that HeLa cells were somehow connected to the woman named Henrietta Lacks. Gey tried to disguise the woman’s identity, claiming that not Henrietta Lacks but Helen Lane (a fictional name) stood for HeLa, the name he gave to cells. ![]() Although that did not break any laws, Dr. Gey, who treated Henrietta, took the cells from her body, and she was not even aware of that. There was only one nuance: since doctors provided free services for blacks, they assumed that they had the right to use them for the research at the same time (Stump, 2014, p. When Henrietta found out that she was ill, she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, the only place in the area she lived in that provided free services to people “without regard to sex, age, or color” (Sharpe, 2010, p. The first and probably the most important ethical issue Rebecca Skloot (2010) discusses in her book about Henrietta Lacks is the issue of consent. Although HeLa led to the most significant changes in medicine of the last century, neither Henrietta nor her family gave their consent to the usage of cells moreover, they did not receive any benefits, even though many studies were rather profitable. However, much fewer people know about Henrietta Lacks, the woman, from whom those cells were taken. ![]() Those helped to understand many diseases, including, for instance, sexually transmitted ones and contributed to the development of medications for treating such illnesses as leukemia, hemophilia, herpes, and Parkinson’s disease (Skloot, 2010). Presently, the whole world knows about so-called HeLa cells that have been used in medical research during the last sixty years. Based on Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the paper discusses consent and privacy issues connected to the case. The cells were taken from Henrietta’s body without her consent, and for at least twenty years after her death, even her closest relatives were not aware of that. ![]() However, many fewer people know about her. Henrietta Lacks is the woman, from whom those cells were taken. HeLa cells are the cells the whole world knows about: they contributed to numerous medical studies and helped to create medications for serious diseases. ![]()
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