Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

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Pages: 4

Week 4 Assignment – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Tonya Reyes -Dickerson – Med 100
Independence University
Write a paper to suggest a solution to how this situation should be handled both ethically and legally and defend it. Be sure to include the evidence from the excerpt that supports your decision. You should also include at least one external source to support your solution. The paper must be 500 words or more.

TONYA REYES-DICKERSON WK 4 ASSIGNMENT- MED100
2
This paper is on Henrietta Lacks a poor African -American woman who was dying of cervical cancer who’s cells from her cervix was stolen by a treating doctor in 1951 without her permission. Her cells were special because unlike normal cells that die after they multiplied
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The HeLa cells was spread all around the world to many doctors to study and use them in developing the Salk polio vaccine, also many drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza and Parkinson’s disease. They also went to space for zero gravity tests. This went on for 25 years till her family found out what was going on and then they all wondered why they was so poor if this was happening to their poor mother’s cells.
(Skloot, 2010)
So what Science Journalist Rebecca Skloot states that in 1951 Henrietta went to the hospital at that time Pap smears was newly invented and lots of woman was dying because of cervical cancer because doctors didn’t really know how to diagnose cervical cancer yet. So sometimes doctors would do a Pap smear and tell patients they had a bacterial infection and gave her meds when she really had cancer. But then again sometimes they said oh you have cancer and do a hysterectomy when they only had a infection. (Skloot, 2010)
So, this doctor at Hopkins decided to that if he could grow cervical cancer cells he could find a cure. So, when he took her samples of normal tissue and then some from the tumor the normal ones died very quickly and they others from the tumor started to