Henrietta Lacks and how unethical is too unethical? One woman changed the face of science, but nobody knows her name. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman living in Queens, California in the mid 1940s, struggling with extreme poverty and the prospect of raising the five children she had had with her cousin, Day. It was not actually until her death, in 1951, that she participated in one of the largest discoveries of modern-day science. When Lacks was only 31 years old, she developed a severe case of cervical cancer which spread throughout her entire body and eventually lead to her death later that year. At the time of her diagnosis, George Gey, a professor at John Hopkins Hospital, was attempting to culture the first line of immortal cells which would survive when separated from the human body. This would give the world the possibility to test vaccines, medicines, the effect of viruses, bacteria and almost anything else on the human body; it would revolutionise contemporary science. On the surface, the prospect of the development of cell cultures and testing procedures seems to be a predominantly positive one. The decrease in animal testing, increase in medicines and overall, a reduction in human suffering are encouraging outcomes which we would see if Geyβs discovery ever amounted to anything. In 1951, George Gey understood these vast potential impacts for people in the future and began to disregard the ill-effects it had on people in the present day; he would take test samples from black African American patients on the John Hopkins hospital wards without their consent or knowledge and use them in his own research. Henrietta Lacks was one of these patients. Gey felt that because these black patients were receiving free health care, their βdonationβ constituted their due payment. At the time, in Baltimore, segregation was law and therefore racism was not contested very much. The consent and ownership of tissues was, and still is, a highly debated topic; the law does not now (and did not then) have a clear-cut definition of what is right and wrong in this field, even if morally there seems to be an obvious answer. Due to this, many other unjust trials were allowed to commence, the most notable being the βTuskegee studyβ of 1932, performed to observe βthe effect of Syphilis on the body when left untreatedβ. Within this trial 600 black men (399 with syphilis and 201 without) were informed that they were to be treated for βbad bloodβ, a term which encompassed syphilis, fatigue, anaemia and many other ailments. In fact, the treatments they received were too weak or even void of the necessary drugs. Even worse, the doctors on the trial were secretly telling other medics to withhold life-saving treatments from their test subjects should they request them. It was not until the study was finally discovered by the American government and forcefully disbanded in 1972 that they confirmed the deaths of 128 of the men and the infection of 40 of their wives. As well as this, 19 of the test subjectsβ children acquired congenital syphilis; all of which could have been avoided through a prescription of penicillin. These medical abuses are not just stories of the past. In 2007, the Retained Organs Inquiry investigated a series of cases on the removal of recently deceased babiesβ organs. This included brains, livers, and hearts which had been removed without the knowledge or consent of the parents, for the purposes of research and education. The parents were told that their childrenβs bodies were buried when in fact most of their parts were simply incinerated.
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