Describe three ethical issues raised by the Henrietta Lacks story.
The three ethical issues raised by the Henrietta Lacks story are informed consent, privacy, and justice. In the medical practice today, researchers at John Hopkins University, where the HeLa cells were stored and distributed, acknowledged that in the past they did not act ethically. One can only infer that researchers cared about what it is in the best interest of science and not their patients (Kieger, 2010).
Privacy refers to the patient 's right to be free from intrusion (Privacy and Confidentiality: The interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics (PRE), 2015) The Lacks family was not aware of their siblings cells and name released in medical research all around the world. The doctor who did the autopsy later told Skloot, the author of The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks that he recalled unsuccessful attempts to contact the family. She quotes him telling her, “And, to be honest, the family wasn’t really my focus…I just thought they might make some interesting color to the scientific story”. Privacy of medical information is a constant concern in the biomedical research. Privacy concerns rose about specimens collected in laboratories. Some laboratories have procedures to strip identifiers specimen so no one would know where they came from. However, if this specimen provides a breakthrough in science the researchers first instinct is to link samples to the information contained in the medical records (Kieger,