Profit – Should a patient have a financial stake in the sale of their body parts, or in licensing technologies derived from their bodies?.Control – What rights does the patient have to control the fate of their bodily tissues and fluids, and what control do they have over their medical information?.Informed consent – How much should the patient be told about how their tissues may be used, and who may come to benefit from those uses?.The use of human tissues in commercial biomedical research raises ethical questions on several fronts: Sixty-years after Henrietta Lacks’ death, United States jurisprudence still has no clear answer to what seems a basic question: “Do we own our own bodies?” (6) In fact, most any patient in any modern hospital or doctor’s office could find themselves in a similar situation with no control over their medical samples. (1) Neither she nor her family gave permission for the cell sample to taken or grown into an immortal cell-culture line, and the family did not even learn HeLa cells existed until 1973. (1) Henrietta’s children, too poor to afford health-care themselves, have not received money from the worldwide use of HeLa. (1) Henrietta Lacks herself died in 1951 in the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins University, a charity ward providing care for poor African-Americans. (4) By 2010, her cells have played a role in nearly 11,000 patents (4) and they have been mentioned in more than 60,000 scientific papers. (1)(2)(3) Cells called HeLa, derived from her cancer, have been used in research ranging from the development of the polio vaccine (4)(5) to the safety of cosmetics. ![]() Henrietta Lacks died from cervical cancer long ago, (1) but cells grown from her tumor have sparked tremendous advances in biomedical research, giving Henrietta Lacks a sort of immortality and placing her and her descendants in the midst of important legal and ethical questions involving sociology and medicine. Garrison First prize winner - Grossmont College Essay Contest on the book by Rebecca Skloot. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and biomedical research ethics Clinical Trials - Frequently Asked Questions. Henrietta Everlasting: 1950s Cells Still Alive, Helping Science. 17, New York : Mary Ann Liebert, 2006, Vol. ![]() Patent Rights in Biological Material - Implications of Principle of Unjust Enrichment Remain Uncertain. Donors Retain No Rights to Donated Tissue. An Alternative to Property Rights in Human Tissue. Department of Health and Human Services.ĩ. The Origins of Informed Consent: The International Scientific Commission on Medical War Crimes, and the Nuremberg Code. Body of Research - Ownership and Use of Human Tissue. Wonder Woman - The Life, Death, and Life After Death of Henrietta Lacks, Unwitting Heroine of Modern Medical Science. Cancer cells killed Henrietta Lacks - then made her immortal. ![]() Medical Ethics, Race, and Henrietta Lacks' "Magic" Cells.
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