Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who lived from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. She was poor, uneducated, and dying of what was later identified as cervical cancer. I know back in the early 1900’s that there was no law established to respect individual’s rights in the medical field. So my question is, at what point does one choose right over wrong?
Henrietta’s cells were cultured into billions and billions of new cells called HeLa. The cells were used for great medical research as well as great personal gain for the doctors who first realized how her cells mutated. HeLa cells have been used since the doctors stole them from her, allowing new advances to be made medically.
I do not agree with what the doctors did, but I am amazed by what became of HeLa cells. I think that this is a common problem, are we willing to use one person, a scapegoat, to help millions of others. When does it stop?
Everyday people make choices about what they want to do. Do I want to go out to a party or do I want to stay home and study? Cereal or eggs for breakfast? There is no right answer for those questions just as much as there is not a right answer for Henrietta Lacks. I can morally disagree with what the doctors did, but it wasn’t wrong back then by law either. It might have been morally wrong for some of them, but when the paydays came around, nobody was morally worried about taking it.
It’s a matter of trust, do I trust the people close to me to not take advantage of me for their personal gain; my doctors, family, friends, classmates. So is it a matter of if we know the person that’s being taken advantage of, or is it if we can personally gain from someone else’s lost, or something completely different?
This makes me think of when the end justifies the means? I feel as though our government as well as other governing bodies tend to think of individual rights as less significant than the well being of the majority. Do the medical benefits gained our society outweigh the doctors' selfish and unethical act?
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