Reflection Paper: The Immortal Life of Henrietta

Reflection Paper
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Reflection Paper
Obtaining informed consent from a subject in medical research is crucial. According to Manti and Licari (2018), to obtain informed consent, researchers must provide the issue with research-related information to decide whether or not to volunteer to be part of the research. This paper reflects on informed consent, focusing on Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were taken and used for analysis without her knowledge.
Henrietta signed the consent form and gave her doctor permission to perform operative procedures as they deemed necessary in her treatment. Linde and Gey had no right to use the cells obtained from her cervix in their research. When Henrietta signed the consent form, she was unaware that any examination beyond the scope of treating what was ailing her would be conducted. All she knew was that she was going to get treatment for her condition. She told her husband and children that the doctor would fix her up (Skloot 2010, p.31). In the consent form, there was no information about the research that TeLinde and Gey conducted. Henrietta became a participant in the study unknowingly. In obtaining informed consent from a subject, specific details on the research should be provided (Manti & Licari, 2018). The detailed information that Henrietta should have been given to obtain informed consent from her include; the purpose of the research, procedures involved (harvesting a sample of cells from her cervix), and the benefits of the research, such as it would be used to provide more information about cancer and how it can be treated.
Beskow (2016) revealed that subjects should be provided with information about the purpose, procedures, risks, benefits, and alternatives and should not be influenced or manipulated to participate in the research. Had Henrietta been provided with the information, she most likely would have given her informed consent. Knowing what the investigation would accomplish in offering clarity about cancer and other medical issues would have convinced her to participate in the study voluntarily. Having relevant information about the analysis allows the subject to state whether they want to participate in the study explicitly or not (Dranseika, Piasecki, & Waligora, 2017). Access to relevant information would have made it easier for Henrietta to give explicit consent or not. However, Henrietta's educational level, as well as race, contributed to this issue. Due to her education level, she could not ask questions or raise concerns about her treatment. As Skloot (2010, p.16) revealed, Henrietta, like many other black patients, only went to the hospital when they felt they had no choice because they did not write or read as much. The hospital terminologies were new to them, and because they had limited education, they never asked for clarifications, either.
I believe that Dr. McKusick and Susan Hsu's request to Henrietta's children for blood samples was unethical. First, as discussed earlier, Henrietta had not given informed consent for her samples to be used in the HeLa research. Therefore, the family did not know that Henrietta had been part ...