The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack - Book Report/Review Example

? “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack” The paper deals with the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack” written by RebeccaSkloot. It is focused on ethical, moral and political implications of this case and is further on discussed in relation to Health Care Law. Key words: cancer, cells, racism, classism, treatment. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack” is a vivid discussion of controversies of the cancer treatment in the ethical, political and social context. The HeLa cells were taken from the woman without her permission and they obtained the name of this woman. Biopsy of cancer cells was for the first time conducted at Johns Hopkins. HeLa cancer cells were sold around the world and different laboratories had an opportunity to conduct researches and studies based on the cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks. Lacks was a 31 year-old woman, who had five children and was treated in different hospitals. The role of HeLa cells cannot be denied, because these cells have triggered the outbreak of virology development and biotech technologies. The scientists grew more than 50 million metric tons of her cells. Thanks to this woman, the billions of careers in the sphere of medicine were developed and the numerous researches and studies were initiated. The children of Lacks found out that their mother’s cells were still alive, though their mother was dead. In this book the author claims that Lacks was one of the most important women, who was alive and suffered from cancer though issued active cells. Moreover, there is a strong emphasis made on the racial politics in medicine. People were interested in the Lacks’ family only when they needed the HeLa cells. There is a great emotional impact exerted on the family of Lacks. It can be easily explained by the fact that there are numerous obtrusions in the ethics and law and the issue of cells collection is really challenging. In accordance with the daughter of Henrietta: “Truth be told, I can’t get mad at science, because it help people live, and I’d be a mess without it. I’m a walking drugstore! . . . But I won’t lie, I would like some health insurance so I don’t got to pay all that money every month for drugs my mother cells probably helped make” (Skloot 2010). The narration of the book is mediated by Deborah. The girl feels that her mother suffers from the constant experiments and her cells are suffering and so does the mother. In the book human cells are positioned as immortal entities, which carry the lives of human beings even after death of a human being. The human nature of the cells taken from Henrietta is strictly criticized by the scientists and they claim that it is better to make different experiments without knowing the owner of the cells. Therefore, it is evident that this book initiated a number of the like cases with serious ethical implications. For example, in the 1980s a doctor who had taken away the cancer-ridden spleen of from John Moore and patented those cells and did not informs the patient about his actions, earned more than $3 billion. The patients have a right to take control over their tissues and the doctors are unable to do different researches or experiments on the basis of the tissues, which were taken from the patients involuntarily. The doctors should refer to their economical concerns and inform the patients about their future actions with the tissues of the patients. Lacks’ children had a chance to go and look at their mother, when she was in the basement and issued millions of cells from her body. Her daughter said that her mother became famous, but it is weird and extraordinary popularity, which should be criticized. Even nowadays these cells are being bought, sold and they will have been further distributed around the world in the name of future researches and studies development, which are focused on cancer cells. The Lacks family did not get a cent from the billions of dollars earned on the basis of HeLa cells implementation and researches in different fields. Children and grandchildren of Henrietta Lacks did not have even health insurance and suffered from financially unjust policy, directed on the fraud of their family. This book is a masterfully created mixture of fiction and non-fiction, of scientific narration and the life story of a family. There are numerous central motifs in the book. Legal, ethical, moral issues, the discussions about racial discrimination and discrimination against poor families of the African Americans are also vividly discussed in this book. There is no evident emphasis made on a “feminist” nature of the book. On the other hand, it is impossible to read this book without penetration into the political context. There is a strong bound between Henrietta’s gender and her race and social class. Either by accident or intentionally this woman lost her cells and was subjected (her cells, actually) to the numerous researches and laboratory experiments, which have been developing even nowadays. It is easy to correlate this accident with the daily sexual abuse of women and different kinds of violence in the face of an invisible authority, which is able to dispose the lives of different human beings. The audience evokes numerous reminiscences about the violence and racial discrimination of the African Americans, on the cruelties, which have always prosecuted an underprivileged social class or the ethnic minorities. All these things are tied close together and in the context of hospitals the issues of slavery are evident even nowadays, when the experiments are conducted over the cells of Henrietta Lacks. The doctors justify their actions and claim that poor patients donate their bodies after deaths as a compensation for treatment, because they have no money to pay for it. Nevertheless, it is impossible to focus on the drawbacks of this story without mentioning positive sides of the experiments. Ethical and legal aspects of medicine are very fragile issues and there is a different moral in this context. It is unethical and immoral to use human embryos for development of different drugs and it is immoral to apply for euthanasia, to make abortions et cetera. From the perspective of religion or centennially set principles of morality, these issues are immoral and they cannot exist. From the perspective of the medical science development, there is a crucial necessity to make experiments even though human cells or body parts are used. The violation against Henrietta Lacks occurred on the background of racism, classism and different social attitudes to rich and poor families. Unfortunately, even nowadays this may happen, because the humanity is unable to overcome the challenges of a biased attitude to different people. In terms of Health Care Law, this book is a great illustrative material for possible violations, but the end of the book shows to the readers that medicine is very often cruel and it is hard to reach justice in this field. At first, it should be noted that due to the lack of protection of this African American woman from a poor family, her children and grandchildren have projected a status of a “trial rat” on them. Conclusion Researchers and scientists may not even think about such a strong outburst of ethical, social and moral discussions occurred on the basis of this resonance case. They were looking for the medicine advancement and in this science it is often necessary to sacrifice something in order to reach positive results or to help other people. The quantity often matters in medicine. Her cells were more like a trial material and I think that the doctors did not care whether this woman was a black or white, a rich or poor and did not care about the feelings of her relatives at all. A doctor must cause pain in order to decrease its occurrence in the future. Thousands of drugs, billions of scientific works and a myriad of new opportunities and perspectives opened for the scientists and researchers in the sphere of medicine once they tried to experiment with the cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks. There is no doubt that such kind of experiments should be negotiated with the patient and with the relatives of the patient, but these moments were neglected at that time. In case the moral implications and ethical principles are taken into account in the field of medicine, the case of Henrietta Lacks will be the only one resonance case of involuntarily and a secret usage of human cells. References Skloot, R. (2010). The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack. Crown. Read More