Bioethics, Informed Consent, and Medical Research Considering the Case of Henrietta Lacks

Book Review for a Social Work Class
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Please provide an analysis of the author’s main health care policy points and how effectively the author convinces the reader of these points. (Due Session 8) 
Book Review for a Social Work Class
In The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot focuses on Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cells were taken and used in medical research. Lacks had visited the Johns Hopkins Hospital and did not know her cancer cells were used, and the HeLa cells became essential in cancer research. The bioethics of using HeLa line cells is linked to the failure to get the consent of Henrietta Lacks and inform her family members. The genetic analyses of the cells ignore the private body and personhood of Lacks and make the private body public in a way that ignores patient autonomy and informed consent. Race, class, gender, and education intersect where researchers exploit a black woman's body without her and her close family members benefitting. The book focuses on the issues of bioethics, informed consent, and medical research considering the case of Henrietta Lacks and medical experimentation on black people. Other ethical issues in the book, which have also influenced health policies, are genetic ownership, patient control, welfare, and privacy.
The book is divided into three parts, part one is chapters one to seven and focuses on the life of Henrietta Lacks, part two on her death, and part three on immortality. While the science and innovation of the HeLa cell facilitated medical advances, the history of medical research is also fraught with exploitation. To further bolster the claim of medical exploitation, abuse, and apartheid, Skloot mentions medical experimentation on African Americans, including the Tuskegee syphilis study (2011). Henrietta Lacks was a poor 31-year-old African American woman from rural Virginia, and the doctors and researchers used cells from her tumor without her knowledge or consent. Lacks was also a vulnerable patient, but for a long time, the medical world failed to acknowledge that she was exploited for a long time, and cells have been instrumental in cancer research for a long time.
Genome data is crucial for genomic explanations for cancer, but there was also and bodily appropriation. HeLa genome influenced biospecimen research, and health policy has focused on biospecimens' scientific and medical research on biospecimens. The medical-research community shares medical data to facilitate research. However, it is necessary to consider patients’ and donors’ perspectives on using their genetic and genomic data. “Henrietta knew nothing about her cells growing in a laboratory. After leaving the hospital, she went back to life as usual” (Skloot, 2011, p.34). Research on immortal human cells influenced medical research, but there were unethical practices and genetic and genome data being shared with the input of Henrietta Lacks or her family members.
While Henrietta Lacks passed away from this cervical cancer, the HeLa cells were used in numerous medical studies to advance biomedicine. In 1951 there was no informed consent, so doctors, researchers, and health practitioners did not have to inform patients about medical procedures and tests. There was no presumed or opt-out consent for Henrietta Lacks as she did not even know her cells were being used for research outside the John Hopkins hospital. They also did not say what happened with Henrietta's cell and the use of the samples taken. Informed consent is a procedure to ensure that a patient knows and understands all relevant information regarding the treatment, medical procedure, test, or clinical trial. When there is patient informed consent, they voluntarily agree to undergo the procedure, treatment or test, or to participate in the trial. The patients are informed about the possible risks, benefits, and alternatives in addition to the purpose for carrying out the medical procedure.
The issue of health practitioners violating informed consent where medical researchers performed experiments, sometimes dangerous ones, influenced changes whether there was support for informed consent in biomedical research. Policymakers recognized the importance of informed consent to deal with unethical practices and experiments, and Henrietta Lacks learned about the HeLa cells two decades later after she died. Formal informed consent protects research participants, but still there is still controversy surrounding genetic ownership of genome data, tissues, and cells. Furthermore, there was unjust enrichment from the HeLa cells, with the researchers and biomedical companies having control over how the cells were used.
Professional practice and conduct are widely recognized now, unlike in the past, where vulnerable individuals were exploited like Henrietta Lacks. Protecting the welfare of vulnerable people is an ethical issue. An example of the vulnerable being exploited and their welfare ignored is the Lacks family living in poverty and health insurance, while companies benefit from Lacks' cells and medical research (Skloot. 2011). The vulnerable are not only exploited, and there is a lack of control over their bodies and no compensation. The author mentions Henrietta Lacks’ gender, race, socioeconomic status, and medical experiments on African Americans as examples of the medical establishment exploiting the vulnerable and marginalized. Even as there were scientific discoveries from HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks’ family did not know the truth until 1971, after companies generated huge profits from the cell line.
The medical establishment is more likely to exploit the poor and uneducated, as with Henrietta and other poor rural ...