\documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage[letterpaper,headheight=15pt]{geometry} \geometry{top=1.0in, bottom=1.0in, left=1.0in, right=1.0in} \usepackage{setspace} \doublespacing \parskip=0pt plus 2pt minus 2pt \usepackage{times} \usepackage{fancyhdr} \pagestyle{fancy} \rhead{Rohrer \thepage} \cfoot{} \renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt} \renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt} \setlength{\headsep}{0.5in}%top of page to bottom of header \addtolength{\headsep}{-12pt}%max height of header \usepackage{xcolor} \usepackage{hyperref} \usepackage[style=mla,backend=bibtex]{biblatex} \defbibheading{bibliography}[\bibname]{\newpage\centerline{Works Cited}} \hypersetup{ colorlinks, linkcolor={red!50!black}, citecolor={blue!50!black}, urlcolor={blue!80!black} } \addbibresource{essaythree.bib} \begin{document} {\parindent0pt\obeylines Holden Rohrer Markley English Composition II 11 Oct 2020 } \centerline{\large\bfseries Henrietta Lacks and Medical Ethics} \iffalse Henrietta Lacks's immortal cells normalized the idea of in-vitro research and in-vitro therapies. Research on human biology is less haphazard and more... Thesis: Generically, new research technology Question: How did Henrietta Lacks's cells affect how I think about disease or being healthy? Answer: The image of "cells" being the thing that makes you unhealthy makes germs more concrete? Lol no that's the germ theory of medicine. They affected how I think about research Question: How did the speculum affect how I think about disease or being healthy? Answer: Sanitary medical instruments became more important. Women's health was considered more serious?? Specialized instruments were normalized?? \fi {\itshape The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks} investigates the medical and personal timelines of Henrietta Lacks's immortal HeLa cells. Their discovery essentially created the field of in-vitro (in a laboratory environment) research and therapy. New vaccines, cell-culture techniques, and the technology to grow stem cells in a petri dish were all invented because of HeLa. But HeLa also helped construct a more ethical research paradigm, under the doctrine of informed consent. Generally, new avenues for research require new limits to be put on them, and HeLa and the technologies it's helped produce have been no different. Gene sequencing, for example, has emerged as a great new frontier, but brings with it the baggage of genetic privacy, as was discovered by the Lacks family in 2013. The widened options new research technologies bring reveal ethical blindspots or create new ones, and the subsequent backlashes build new norms protecting the health of participants, like informed consent. ``Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable'' describes one such backlash. The respected physician Chester Southam feared ``Henrietta's cancer cells could infect the scientists working on them,'' \autocite[127]{Lacks} so he tested his theory on subjects he lied to, injecting them with Henrietta's cells to see if the subjects got cancer. In at least one subject, ``Henrietta's cancer cells metastasized.'' \autocite[128]{Lacks} Southam rationalized his violation of subjects' bodily autonomy by claiming his trials weren't meaningfully injurious, but three doctors saw a striking similarity to Nazi medical experiments prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials. The Board of Regents ``found Southam and Mandel guilty of ``fraud or deceit and unprofessional conduct in the practice of medicine,''\thinspace'' \autocite[134]{Lacks} causing the National Institute of Health to establish that ``all proposals for research on human subjects had to be approved by review boards'' \autocite[135]{Lacks}. This sort of experiment was neither viable nor ``necessary'' before HeLa, meaning HeLa was crucial in bringing attention to this ethical crisis. The novel technology of HeLa led to an abusive experiment being revealed to the public, and the NIH and others stepped in to protect patients from being unknowingly included in studies like this. The backlashes against new technology aren't always entirely rational or altruistic, however. Generally, backlashes aim to protect the public from a perceived harm, real or not. ``SCIENTISTS CREATE MONSTERS'' \autocite[142]{Lacks} headlined in the early 60s, attacking somatic cell fusion, another technology made possible by HeLa. ``Cell sex'' let researchers ``begin mapping human genes to specific chromosomes,'' \autocite[142]{Lacks} develop ``cancer therapies like Herceptin,'' \autocite[142]{Lacks} and ``identify the blood groups that increased the safety of transfusions.'' \autocite[142]{Lacks} But the fact that this technology fused different species was alarming. The prohibition wasn't institutionalized like informed consent, but mouse-human hyrbids still held stigma. Many new technologies garner similar responses, but the backlash rarely sticks if the criticism is invalid. % improve The book centrally contends with another rights issue---what control the Lacks (and medical patients, in general) deserve over their cells. The historical conflict can't be resolved because her cells can't be taken differently: ```They were taken in a bad way but they are doing good for the world,' [Alfred Lacks Carter] says.'\thinspace'' But many of the injustices that occurred after her death can: ``doctors and scientists repeatedly failed to ask her family for consent as they revealed Lacks’s name publicly, gave her medical records to the media, and even published her cells' genome online.'' \autocite{Nature} Because full genome sequencing has been made so cheaply available, a researcher, without asking the Lacks, published HeLa's genome in 2013. ``The work would become a bioethical lightning rod'' \autocite{Callaway}. The incident raised questions about genetic privacy and scientists' awareness that cell lines might even be deanonymized in the future. The development of genome sequencing raised new questions intrinsic to the technology like ``can a genome be deanonymized?'' and ``should the genomic data be protected?'' but it also dredges up the same old concern: what rights the Lacks have over Henrietta's cells. The author chose to unpublish it and, with the Lacks's approval, republished it with restrictions. This microcosmic justice shows that new techniques and technologies amplify existing problems and create entirely new ones, but the public criticism received solves or mitigates those same problems. \printbibliography \end{document}