Essay on Henrietta Lacks

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HENRIETTA LACKS
One woman's cells single-handedly helped improve the day to day life of many humans all around the world today. That woman's name is Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lack’s cells have been famous over the past few decades. The ethical controversy concerning the cells has made Henrietta Lacks very famous. Although Henrietta succumbed to death, Hela cells have been useful in medical research. HeLa cells were the first human cells to grow and divide infinitely in the laboratory. This made scientists label them as immortal cells. The great medical strides made by Henrietta’s cells are stated in many articles such as “5 important ways Henrietta Lacks changed medical science today” written by Leah Samuel published on the website, Stat, “Five Reasons Henrietta Lacks is the Most Important Woman in History” written by Paul D. Andrews and his article is published in Popular Science. The next article is written by Lindsey Flanick and published at Yale-New HavenTeachers Institute and is titled “Cell Biology: From HeLa Cells to the Polio Vaccine”. Another article is written by Carl Zimmer, published in The New York Times and is titled “A Family Consents to a Medical Gift, 62 Years Later”. The last article is titled “Henrietta Lacks' Cells Are Still Helping Protect Women From Cervical Cancer” written by Rosalie Chan and is published in HuffPost. The medical strides made by Henrietta Lacks’s cells outweigh the ethical issues because her cells helped produce the vaccine for polio, the vaccine for HPV in females, mapping the human genome, and how cells maintain their early stages.
Henrietta Lacks was a woman of African American descent. She felt something was wrong as if she “... got a knot on her womb” and traveled to Johns Hopkins hospital and there she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Before she was diagnosed with cancer, Henrietta Lacks suffered from abdominal pains and unusual bleeding. To some extent, she thought it was an ectopic pregnancy. Since Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman, the only hospital that she could be able to access was John Hopkins Hospital which was very far away. The authors suggest that the doctor had never seen anything like that before. Doctor Howard Jones decided to remove some cells for biopsy. After the study, the remnants of the tissues were labeled HeLa. This was the name that was assigned to these cells. The results of the samples indicated that the tumor was cancerous and this happened with the knowledge of Henrietta and her family.
This is where all the ethical issues begin to arise. Henrietta Lacks "... never consented to her cells’ being studied” (Zimmer) as it was stated by Carl Zimmer in his article titled “A Family Consents to a Medical Gift, 62 Years Later” that is published in The New York Times. Lindsey Flanich writes in her article titled “Cell Biology: From HeLa Cells to the Polio Vaccine” published in Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute’s website, “When Gey was given a sample of Lacks' cells, he was amazed to find that they could be kept alive and grown, unlike any human cell that he or other scientists ...