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Formal essay about consent in health care
Nursing essays on the ethical principles of consent
Nursing essays on the ethical principles of consent
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Do you believe that once your tissue has left your body, you no longer have rights to its commercial value? What about if it was taken without consent? Consent has been a major concern due to the medical advances made in the last century. After leaving the doctor’s office, anything you leave behind is no longer yours and hospitals can keep it for research sometimes forever (Skloot 315). In her work, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot uses Henrietta Lacks as an example to show how consent can be a complicated topic due to laws and research. Legal and medical scholars agree with Skloot saying the bio-technology industry is getting out of control. Thus, in her work, Rebecca Skloot examines consent, research, and the messy way …show more content…
One of the major themes of her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is consent. If she didn’t feel strongly about it, why would she spend years of her life researching and writing a book? Likewise, in Skloot’s chapter titled “A Miserable Specimen,” Skloot talks about how while Henrietta’s cells were thriving in Gey’s lab, Henrietta was in pain from cancer and the treatments (Skloot 63-66). She also states that everyone she talked to and all the records she looked at showed that George Gey—the doctor who discovered the immortality of Henrietta’s cells—never spoke with Henrietta about her cells. The only person who claims that Gey talked to Henrietta was one of his colleagues. He claims to have said, “Your cells will make you immortal” (Skloot 66). The consent issue brought up in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is similar to John Moore’s court case on commercial exploitation of …show more content…
They claim the reason these conflicts are brought to court is because of confusion over who has the rights of the samples so if there were laws about tissue samples and research there wouldn’t be as much confusion (Gantz 301). One example of this confusion is William Catalona, a prostate cancer researcher at Washington University. Caralona decided to leave Washington University and research at Northwestern University. Gantz and co-authors note, before leaving, Catalona sent out consent forms to the patient’s whom he had tissue and/or blood samples from saying “I have donated a tissue and/or blood sample for Dr. William J. Catalona's research studies. Please release all samples to Dr. Catalona at Northwestern University upon his request. I have entrusted these samples to Dr. Catalona to be used only at his direction and with his express consent for research projects" (Gantz 300). They go on to note, nearly 6,000 people returned consent forms and Washington University filed a lawsuit against Catalona claiming the University had rights to the tissue/blood (Gantz 300). Gantz, Roche, and George include this story to show that after the tissue leaves the body, it’s hard to tell who “owns” or has rights to
An abstraction can be defined as something that only exists as an idea. People are considered abstractions when they are dehumanized, forgotten about, or segregated and discriminated against. The scientific community and the media treated Henrietta Lacks and her family as abstractions in several ways including; forgetting the person behind HeLa cells, giving sub-par health care compared to Caucasians, and not giving reparations to the Lacks family. On the other hand, Rebecca Skloot offers a different perspective that is shown throughout the book. Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks describes the trials and tribulations the Lacks family has gone through because of HeLa cells and shows how seeing a person as an abstraction is a dangerous thing.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta Lacks. In the early 1951 Henrietta discovered a hard lump on the left of the entrance of her cervix, after having unexpected vaginal bleeding. She visited the Johns Hopkins hospital in East Baltimore, which was the only hospital in their area where black patients were treated. The gynecologist, Howard Jones, indeed discovers a tumor on her cervix, which he takes a biopsy off to sent it to the lab for diagnosis. In February 1951 Henrietta was called by Dr. Jones to tell about the biopsy results: “Epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, Stage I”, in other words, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Before her first radium treatment, surgeon dr. Wharton removed a sample of her cervix tumor and a sample of her healthy cervix tissue and gave this tissue to dr. George Gey, who had been trying to grow cells in his lab for years. In the meantime that Henrietta was recovering from her first treatment with radium, her cells were growing in George Gey’s lab. This all happened without the permission and the informing of Henrietta Lacks. The cells started growing in a unbelievable fast way, they doubled every 24 hours, Henrietta’s cells didn’t seem to stop growing. Henrietta’s cancer cell grew twenty times as fast as her normal healthy cells, which eventually also died a couple of days after they started growing. The first immortal human cells were grown, which was a big breakthrough in science. The HeLa cells were spread throughout the scientific world. They were used for major breakthroughs in science, for example the developing of the polio vaccine. The HeLa-cells caused a revolution in the scientific world, while Henrietta Lacks, who died Octob...
Without them, we would be decades behind because the average person would not find signing away a piece of their body acceptable. Skloot brings up a case where a man sues a scientist for doing research on his removed spleen without his consent. The author states that those in favor of research said it “…would ‘create chaos for reseachers’ and ‘[sound] the death kneel to the university physician-scientist’. They called it ‘a threat to the sharing of tissue for research purposes,’ and worried that patients would block the progress of science by holding out for excessive profits, even with cells that weren’t worth millions…” (203). The concern shown from the quote was that with extensive limitations on research and tight ethical codes, the information found would be inadequate at best. On one hand, you do need to be honest with the patient, but for the cost of so many lives, there needs to be a balance of creating breakthroughs and appeasing those who matter in the situation. In regards to Henrietta, she did sign a document to have any medical procedure done that was deemed necessary by her doctors. With that being said, she did unknowingly give away some of her rights as a
Although she was taken from the world too soon, Henrietta Lacks was a warm hearted woman, and though unbeknownst to her, she would pave the way for the medical field and greatly expand our understanding of one of the nation’s greatest killers; cancer. In 1951 people did not talk about cancer lightly; cancer was a very touchy subject, especially for those who knew they couldn’t receive treatment once they had been diagnosed. When Lacks went to the hospital because of a “knot on her womb” she never thought that it would grow into a full fledge tumor that would end up taking her life. Henrietta lived a simple yet happy life which consisted of working on the farm, loving her husband, and raising children, and she was not going to ruin the lifestyle she knew so well by telling her family that she had cancer; it was just unheard of.
Yearly, thousands die from not receiving the organs needed to help save their lives; Anthony Gregory raises the question to why organ sales are deemed illegal in his piece “Why legalizing organ sales would help to save lives, end violence”, which was published in The Atlantic in November of 2011. Anthony Gregory has written hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers, amongst the hundreds of articles is his piece on the selling of organs. Gregory states “Donors of blood, semen, and eggs, and volunteers for medical trials, are often compensated. Why not apply the same principle to organs? (p 451, para 2)”. The preceding quote allows and proposes readers to ponder on the thought of there being an organ
This was the same time that Henrietta Lacks lived. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who went to the doctor because she had cervical cancer. Her cells were taken and are still alive in culture today (Skloot 41). Hence, her cells were nicknamed Immortal (Skloot 41). Although many, at the time, saw no issue with using a patient without consent issue with what?
Imagine having a part of your body taken from you without your permission, and then having those cells that are a part of your body grow and are being processed in labs around the world and then ultimately being used for the highest of research. That is what happens to Henrietta Lacks. In the book, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, we see Henrietta Lacks and her families story unravel, the numerous hardships that they faced, and the shocking revelation that their relative cells were being used for research without her consent and theirs.
Dr. TeLinde and Dr. Gey were collecting samples for reasons that could potentially bring large benefit to society, but they did not consider how the individuals who provided the sample would directly benefit. In the case of Henrietta her tissue sample ultimately led to major medical advances, but due to the fact that when the sample was taken the researchers did not give forethought to the benefits and risks that might occur; therefore, Henrietta and her family were exposed to severe loss of privacy and did not receive any form of benefits from the widespread use of her cell line. The Belmont Report (1979) states how relevant risks and benefits must be thoroughly outlined in the documents used in the informed consent process. The research was not well designed in the assessment of risks and benefits component and did not consider this
The credibility and trustworthiness of a person can be achieved through their achievements and titles. Writers have the ability of achieving this by appealing to the rhetorical strategy ethos. Rebecca Skloot’s inclusion of her knowledge in science to provide her credibility and numerous information of all her characters in the novel helps develop the rhetorical strategy of ethos. Skoot’s implementation of appealing to ethos aids in emphasizing on the credibility of both herself and all the other characters in the novel. She demonstrates this rhetorical strategy by indicating titles and achievements her characters in the novel. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot develops the rhetorical strategy of ethos through the use of her characters in the novel consisting of Skloot herself, George Gey, and the virologist Chester Southam.
In the novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author, Rebecca Skloot, tries to convince the audience that her argument regarding, Henrietta and her cells is worth thinking about. Skloot argues that the woman whose body contained these life-changing cells deserved to be recognized. While trying to prove her side of the argument, Skloot uses logos within the novel to emphasize to the audience just how important her cells are, by providing the science behind the cells and their accomplishments.
In looking at these instances, the doctors seemed to have thought their actions normal. They thought that since they were treating the patient they automatically had access to their cells, tissues, DNA, that they could take without permission and use to develop science or to even become rich and famous like Dr. Golde tried to do. One might say that no matter how useful a person's biological property can be to western medicine and science, it does not excuse the violation of privacy of a patient. Ostensibly, there is no need to worry about a patient saying no if the doctor has moral and beneficial intentions for the use of a patient's private, biological
The initiative wasn’t taken to learn about the family or the origin of the cells. Roland H. Berg, a press officer at the NFIP, sent George Gey, head of tissue-research at John Hopkins, a letter saying, “ An intrinsic part of this story would be to describe how these cells, originally obtained from Henrietta Lakes, are being grown and used for the benefit of mankind” (pg. 106). This letter is a very clear representation of the lack of knowledge from society. Berg referred to Henrietta as “Henrietta Lakes” on multiple occasions in the letter. The correct form of her name wasn’t even known. A name is such a distinct representation of identity and Henrietta’s was so commonly mixed up and misspelled. An opposing view could argue that the scientists’ job was to work with the cells. Their goal was not to learn the family tree of the individual, but to make discoveries using the cells. It wasn’t until the autopsy of Henrietta Lacks, that people started to face reality: HeLa is not just a cell line. HeLa was a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a best friend. Mary Gey, George Gey’s wife and research assistant, viewed Henrietta’s body once it was being used for tests in the autopsy room. She noticed that Henrietta had her toenails painted with a bright red polish. Mrs. Gey said, “When I saw those toenails, I nearly fainted. I
In the novel The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, the author tells the miraculous story of one woman’s amazing contribution to science. Henrietta Lacks unknowingly provides scientists with a biopsy capable of reproducing cells at a tremendusly fast pace. The story of Henrietta Lacks demonstrates how an individual’s rights can be effortlessly breached when it involves medical science and research. Although her cells have contributed to science in many miraculous ways, there is little known about the woman whose body they derived from. Skloot is a very gifted author whose essential writing technique divides the story into three parts so that she, Henrietta
Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, depicts the violation of medical ethics from the patient and researcher perspectives specifically when race, poverty, and lack of medical education are factors. The novel takes place in the southern United States in 1951. Henrietta Lacks is born in a poor rural town, Clover, but eventually moves to urban Turner Station. She was diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins hospital where cells was unknowingly taken from her and used for scientific research. Rebecca Skloot describes this when she writes, “But first—though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting sample or asked she wanted to be a donor—Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta's cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish” (33). The simple act of taking cells, which the physicians did not even think twice about, caused decades
The story about Henrietta Lacks is the evidence that the ethics of medical processes need to be improved. For a long time, many patients have been victims of malpractice. Sometimes, the doctors still can do anything without the agreement from patients. Any medical institution needs to hold the integrity on any consent form that is signed by a patient. To summarize, the story of Henrietta Lacks could be the way to improve the standardization and equality of medical institutions in the future.