Few months before her death, she had visited John Hopkins hospital, Baltimore in Maryland and the doctor took two small samples of her cells; one healthy and other of her cervical cancer cells. The cells were taken to a lab to improve the information on cervical cancer and discover that the cells are unlike another cell that was tested before. The cells were self-efficient and reproducing in the media, double in growth within twenty-four hours. With Henrietta’s cells, researchers could conduct experiments with the human cells in vitro with the variety of treatments which something they couldn’t do before with human being. HeLa was adequate in many labs and was mass produced at the place known to be HeLa factory. The new development advances the scientific and medical field greatly but it was view differently by some in the society as morally unethical when the truth of He-La was revealed few decades later 1.
Scientific society view that cells were obtained without informed consent which means any tests that is done should only be voluntary basis of full understanding of all the implications which in this case it was not 2. During the era at that time where civil right haven’t been established and Johns Hopkins is the only free clinic for the …show more content…
When the a passage from the legislation express about protecting genetic information led to an inaccurate message to the public that genetic information is extremely important than other medical information but in reality all type of genetic or medical information is important it should be kept privately. Even when legislation on protecting genetic privacy has been introduced to the Congress but it still has not been passed. Only a few states have passed but it still early to tell how effective it’s. 5 There are many laws that were pass to protect a person genome such as “Common Rule” in 1991 that required all federal funded research projects to obtain a necessary informed consent of the participant and unlike the case of Henrietta the participant must understand the risk of releasing their private information. GINA in 2008 and HIPAA in 1996 that maintain patient individually identifiable health information, there also certificates of confidentiality that was issues by National Institutes of Health (N.I.H) that protect the privacy of research participants against investigators and institutions from disclose any information from any civil, criminal, and federal, state, and local level. There is also “The Freedom of Information Act” (FOIA), the first U.S law in 1966 give citizen