Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920, and she later died of complications related to cervical cancer. Henrietta unwittingly made a significant contribution to the biomedical society; especially in regards to the first immortal cell line (Barkley & Alford, 2015). These cells were obtained from the malignancy in her cervix and cultured by George Otto Grey and are still used for biomedical research. Henrietta did not consent for her cells to be used in scientific research (Beskow, 2016). In contemporary societies, scientists are still exploiting her cells for biological and medical discoveries.
The results of the research conducted using HeLa cells belong to individuals and organizations that have invested in the research, including the researchers, their institutions, and their financial sponsors. However, organizations using the HeLa cell line should give royalties to the family of Henrietta Lacks (Barkley & Alford, 2015). The ethical principles guiding issues such as respect for autonomy and informed consent had already been decided three years before Henrietta Lacks’s diagnosis in the Nuremberg Trials (Beskow, 2016). George Otto Grey may not have been aware of the new ethical standards established by the Nuremberg Code at the time or may have just ignored them.
The family of Henrietta Lacks, therefore, is owed compensation for the use of their relative’s tissue without consent (Beskow, 2016). If Henrietta Lacks were alive, she would have demanded compensation for the use of her tissues, and any reasonable court would have approved her request because the ethical guidelines in existence at the time were contravened in the acquisition of her cells (Barkley & Alford, 2015).
Ideally, Mrs. Henrietta Lacks’s consent should have been sought before the biopsy tests or before her cells could be used as commercialized cultures (Barkley & Alford, 2015). This opinion does not change even if Mrs. Lacks had given consent to the procedures (Beskow, 2016).
References
Barkley, L., & Alford, D. (2015). “Medical ethics and health equity: The Henrietta Lacks story.” MedEdPORTAL Publications, 11, 10276.
Beskow, L. M. (2016). “Lessons from HeLa Cells: The Ethics and Policy of Biospecimens.” Annual review of genomics and human genetics, (1).
