Black Woman Named Henreitta Lacks - Essay Example

HeLa succeeded where all other human samples failed. The cells were continuously multiplying and Gey gave away the laboratory-grown cells to his colleagues. Soon Henreitta Lacks died of aggressive cervical cancer. However, her cells taken without knowledge multiplied onto a scale, they would weigh more than 50 million metric tons. HeLa cells were used for developing vaccines, to understand the behavior of cancer cells, viruses and used in the research of gene mapping and to find and the effects of nuclear bombs on human cells.

The Hela cells were commercialized and built multimillion-dollar industries. Thousands of careers were built on the Hela cells.

Henrietta Lacks's family did not know about all these things until 1970. While Lacks's world-changing cells were minting money on a commercial scale, Henreitha Lacks's children and their children lived in poverty and could not afford medicare and health insurance, Instead, they were also unethically recruited into HeLa research without their informed consent. In the words of Lacks's youngest daughter Deborah "If my mother's cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can't afford to see no doctors?"

The story's main theme is about bad medical ethics and social wrong committed by the medical establishment. The main theme raises questions about racism and accessibility to health care. It also raises important questions about medical compensation to patients and their families.

Henreitta Lacks, the 31 years old African- American woman who had once been a tobacco farmer is the main character of the story. She comes fully alive in the pages of the book. According to Gey's lab assistant Mary Kubicek when "I saw those toenails, I nearly fainted. I thought, of jeez, she is a real person" The story deals with the complex emotional, scientific and legal issues the main character's family faced.

The other primary character is Deborah, Henreitta Lack's youngest daughter. She is the main driving force of the story. She travelled to many places with Skloot in pursuit of her mother's legacy, which led her to believe that her mother was eternally suffering from all the research conducted on her cells. She is a spiritual person believing in the immortality of her mother both literally and spiritually.

George Gay plays an important role in the story. Without him, the world would not have known about Henreitta Lack's immortal life. Without him, science and medical care would not have found care for many diseases and without him, the questions about bioethics would not have been raised.

Rebekka Skloot, the science journalist is also a  primary character whose decade of research took her to Lacks's family. Her vivid account about the life of Henritta Lacks's family unravels the story behind the cell research. She narrates lucidly the racial politics of medicine, poverty and science behind the important medical discoveries.

The book is entwined with the implications of ethical leadership. The ethical leadership in medicare is involved in a manner that respects the right and dignity of others. Leaders who are ethical are people-oriented and responsive to the needs of people If the leaders are ethical, they can ensure that ethical practices are carried out throughout the organization. Henreitta Lacks was never asked for her consent for removing her tissues. At present, dignity is an important issue for medical researchers. It has been invoked in the bioethics of human genetic engineering. The Declaration of Helsinki says: "It is the duty of physicians who participate in medical research to protect the life, health, dignity, integrity, right to self-determination, privacy and confidentially of personal information of research object. ''

The book underlines the need to promote cultural competence in health care. A pure diagnosis due to a lack of cultural understanding can have fatal consequences. It is simply the level of knowledge-based skills required to provide effective ethical care to patients from a particular ethnic or racial group. The way Lacks's cells were taken without her consent shows the way that cultural competence was ignored. The patients often treated at Johns Hopkins were facing institutional discrimination and they got a different kind of care since their culture was different

Understanding different cultural beliefs require respect for others. Cultural competence needs listening to the patients and understanding their beliefs about their illness. To provide appropriate care we must know the culturally influenced health behaviors.

The book is also interwoven with Seven Revolution initiatives aimed at the year 2030. Each of the seven forces throws opportunity and risk we face in the coming years. The effect of the population is ageing, urbanization and industrial growth affect health care initiatives taken by the governments.

There will be enormously change in the way we consume food, water and energy. The production patterns will expect a sea change.

The technology changes in biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics and computation will open up new opportunities in every walk of life.

The vast amount of data change and knowledge we gain from them will change the way we govern in the future. The whole economic landscape will be changed. There will be a new paradigm shift in the security aspect of our nation against terrorists.

The role of leaders, corporations and governments will be ruled by ethical leadership code.