In Search of Henrietta
There are certain events in human life that might change the course of one’s life. There are also some human lives that might change the course of history and evolution of human civilization in general. Speaking of such people, some might imagine famous warlords, rulers of Ancient kingdoms; other would think about inventors, scientists and geniuses who were shaping their epochs and forthcoming generations; some might think of political leaders who lead their countries to prosperity and victory in global wars. In most cases, no one would have thought of an ordinary Afro-American woman in her thirties, who had five children, loved her husband and died very young from cervical cancer in John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, on October 4th 1951. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how such short and ordinary life could contribute to the change of epochs and development of human civilization. Furthermore, how could one person save millions of people and remain unknown to the general public? All those questions and even more intriguing issues are discussed in the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot.
The book tells a story of an incredible contribution of one person to survival of forthcoming generations, story of immorality of scientific research and discoveries in medicine, how HeLa cells had shaped the world as it is today in-between religious faith and scientific skepticism, how one person might mean the whole world and her children stay in darkness of social ignorance and lack of any protection. This story is also about human nature, survival of humanity and price it might be willing to pay. The present paper aims to discuss the crucial issues of Skloot’s book and explain controversy around HeLa cells, their origin and life story of Henrietta Lacks and her family. The structure of the paper consists of paragraphs referring to specific issues of the book: the process of cells obtaining; its influence on history, medicine, ethics and research; religious, racial and cultural controversy. Finally, my opinion on the topic will be expressed and connection between those events and health psychology will be outlined.
When I was beginning to read the book, I was not ready for what was coming. I thought it would be a book about prominent and conscious activity of a woman towards improvement of life of other people and next generations. As it always happens, the reality was far from expectations. The greatest human invention shaping our epoch was a result of the violation of Afro-American woman’s right for privacy of her own body cells. The story starts when Henrietta, mother of five children, started having heavy bleeds, so she went to the only hospital serving Afro-Americans – John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore. She was diagnosed with a severe form of cervical cancer. After one biopsy, sample of her cancer cells was taken for research and she was not even aware of fact (Skloot, 30). A coincidence or providence was that in the same hospital, Dr. Gregory Gey was searching for decades how to preserve tumor cells alive in tubes for the further research and development of treatment for various illnesses (Skloot, 33). The success of Henrietta’s cells was mainly due to the same reason that caused her painful and long-lasting death from metastases – aggressive form of cancer. It was so aggressive that it managed to survive in the artificial environment and continue to divide extremely fast, giving birth to the first “immortal cell line” in the world.
The first thought crossing my mind was illegitimacy of Gey’s actions and lack of respect to human life. On the other hand, if to be more precise, his activity is rather lacking respect to a human death and dead person, since his actions were directed on saving human lives. In this case, one might think that such violation can be justified by good intention and that science should treat subject of its study as material and not as a living or previously living human being. In this context, the body lying on the table is not the only one to lose human nature, but also the scientist treating it without any respect to the person that was in that body and sufferings she had endured. I could not get rid of the feeling of misperception of Gey’s actions, irrespective of his good intentions and nobility of the final results. I keep thinking of how he had ordered his assistant Mary Kubicek to get more cells from Henrietta’s body, before her family had retrieved it (Skloot, 34). The most striking was not even the fact that her relatives were not asked for consent, but that he body was treated as an object. At that moment, I thought that scientists (particularly medical doctors) had no respect to spirituality of human life and death. I was even close to understanding why people prefer cremation to the burial ritual.
Another thing is that Gey was an example of those scientists who become obsessed with their idea of break-through and were likely to cross the line of moral and ethics in order to achieve their goals. Particular feature is that usually the goal is not in altruistic saving of human lives but rather personal succeeding and recognition in the scientific fields. In this context, Gey was hunting his own ghost and all the rest did not matter. His aggression to gain success could match only with the aggression of Henrietta’s cancer cells in their desire to survive and spread.
Irrespective of moral conflict regarding the obtaining of Henrietta’s cells, if Gey had not done that with or without her consent, the history of humanity would have been entirely different. If the first immortal cell line of HeLa was not developed, the current number of human race would be much lower if not declining at all. The main contribution of Gey and Henrietta to the history of human civilization is in the lives they have saved. If those events have never happened, polio vaccines, the cancer drugs like tamoxifen, genetic technologies, in vitro fertilization, various medication treatments of flue, Parkinson’s disease and hundreds of other medications would have never been invented (Skloot, 2). What would be the impact of this on humanity? Death rate would have increased significantly from a regular influenza to polio and cancer equally. So, human beings might have been on the edge of extinction.
Concerning the impact of those events on medicine, they had given it a new life and new dimension for development. Except for the development of new cures and techniques of various diseases’ treatment, medicine made one more step closer to playing God, since it had stepped to the dimension of genome deciphering and genetic modifications research (Keiger, 3). Thanks to HeLa, today, we have such branches of medicine as genetic medicine, genomic science and even bioengineering. In this context, scientists are stepping aside from curing people and become more interested in modifying human beings. In this context, medicine had changed under influence of market economy and prevalence of big corporations in the field of the most advanced medical research. Just as Henrietta’s cells have boosted development of medicine, profit-driven medical enterprise had changed the meaning of those cells from parts of human body to research material and finally to goods for sale. Nowadays, those sells are on stocks of various private and public firms.
The greatest implication those events had on ethics and moral of the whole story. After the decades, all events of the case became public and ethic scandal took place. The precedence of Henrietta had caused many of ethical problems. First of all, in order to protect one’s right for his/hers own body before and after death, informed consent was created. In this context, ethical issue refers to one’s ownership of all parts of the body during life and after death and violation of this right by scientific research (Keiger, 3). Secondly, in 1976, Henrietta’s family members were asked to give their blood, as they believed, to check for cancer, but there blood was searched for DNA markers to identify HeLa cells in various lab samples (Skloot, 182). In this context, the main ethic issue was that having informed consent is not entirely ethically justified, an individual should have an accurate explanation of what research is going to be conducted and what might be its implications. In case of Lacks family, they were deluded by genetics conducting research. Geneticist Victor McKusick and Susan Hsu did not inform or properly explain the family what was the essence of their research. Furthermore, the results of their research were published in the academic journal disclosing the information of 43 DNA markers (Skloot, 186). The most unethical was that they had indicated Henrietta’s name; thus, the whole family was under lens of scientists’ exploration. Although their names were not identified, the whole genealogy of genetic illnesses and abnormalities were publically discussed, depriving the family of an elementary right for medical privacy and nondisclosure of private information.
Concerning the implications of those events on research, they had boosted research in all its embodiments. HeLa became the main source of medical research and the main material for experimentations. Another implication of this case was that attention of the research had shifted from human body as whole to its cells. This contributed to dehumanization of research and concentration on genetic and cell explorations. Subsequently, researchers needed more samples for explorations; biobanks became an ordinary thing of medical research (Keiger, 4). On the other hand, by shifting research from the whole body to cells and genes, most of experiments moved to the labs and human experiments had decreased, saving human lives by limiting unnecessary testing.
The greatest tragedy of the story refers to racial and cultural issues of Henrietta and her family. Having contributed to the improvement of so many lives, Henrietta had not even equal rights for normal life at her time. Although her medical treatment in John Hopkins hospital was as good as for white patients, the way her cells were taken and post-mortem attitude still suggest some racial discourse (Skloot, 59). Concerning the culture of her family, she was quite reserved about her illness even with her husband. In this context, she followed traditional Afro-American role of a strong mother of the family, who was supposed to be a good house-wife and carer of her five children. It is not that there was no love in the family, but it was the order she was accustomed to. Thus, she lived a difficult, poor life of inequality and died in extreme pain. The worst thing is that after all her sufferings and her contribution to science and human civilization, her family remains in almost the same unequal situation as she was. Not having enough money to go to college, her family members are treated as blood donors and objects for journalists’ investigations, and they do not have even a sufficient medical insurance (Skloot, 198). In his context, racial inequality gets entirely new meaning. Although racial segregation and inequality are officially prohibited; today, they are embodied in income inequality, which corresponds to racial differences. I wonder would Henrietta’s family be in the same disadvantageous situation if it were white, and would Gey had taken her cells without consent. It is difficult to have an exact answer, but reality remains unfair and unequal.
Frankly speaking, I think that the whole story is quite depressing. Irrespective of so many lives saved thanks to cells of one woman who had endured numerous pains in her life, her family remains in darkness of public ignorance and lack of basic medical benefits. Just as Henrietta, her family remains excluded from progress of the modern society. In the end, her sacrifices contribute to the building of multinational corporations and making new medications affordable to the wealthiest classes of society, leaving the poorest in the same condition as was Henrietta when she died – in pain, on her own. Another thing is that, from the ethical perspective, her case gave a start of quite disturbing tendency of changing the meaning of human body from the inborn property of an individual to a mere commodity, which can be bought at any moment by the one who offers more. That is not an evolution of human civilization, I was thinking about when I have started this paper. Another thing is that I believe in spirituality of each cell, and I definitely would not want someone to manipulate me even on the level of cells. This is also the main reason why I do not want to give my blood to donor banks. You never know what will happen to it in the end.
The last question to be answered is what the connection between this case and health psychology is. Through the development of genetics as part of health psychology, Henrietta might be considered as a foremother of the discipline. Through exploration of genetics, social and ethnic environment, personal perception of disease and treatment, health psychology explores how to prevent a disease and which treatment might be the most applicable in respect to individual’s psychological specifics. The case of Henrietta also contributes to the issue of trust to doctors which might be crucial for the efficiency of the treatment, as part of health psychology. In conclusion, I would like to say that Henrietta had changed human society in so many ways that we still have various aspects to study and comprehend.
Works Cited
Keiger, Dale. “Immortal Cells, Enduring Issues”. Johns Hopkins Magazine. 2 Jun 2010. Web.
17 Nov. 2011.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York, NY: Crown Publishers,
2010. Print.
