Ethical Principles Paper

Samantha Craig

PSY/305

1/24/2015

Kelli Gray-Smith

Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who was born in the state of Virginia in 1920. At the age of twenty-one, she and her family moved to the Baltimore, Maryland. This is when Mrs. Lacks life forever changed the world of science and never even knew it. During this time in the United Stated history, scientist were working hard on trying to make human cells grow outside of the body unsuccessfully. This changed on February 1, 1951 when Henrietta went to see a gynecologist about some irregular bleeding. There during the examination Dr. Howard Jones noticed a small lesion that was located on her cervices that was purple and if touched bleed too easily. This lesion did not look like cancer, so he cut off a small tissue sample and sent it to Dr. George Gey, who was working on the cell growth research. It was there that Dr. Gey's assistant would cultivate that tissue sample of Henrietta Lacks, and turn the scientific world upside down.

When looking at the case of Henrietta Lacks the demographics is a bit complicated. According to Merriam-Webster (2015), demographic means "relating to the study of changes that occur in large groups of people over a period of time." When Henrietta's cell tissue sample was being cultivated, it did something that none of the other cultivated cells have done anywhere in the world. They started to grow and multiply, and for the first time in history the ability to grow human cells outside the body was successful. Dr. George Gey named these Henrietta Lacks cells the HeLa cells, sense he could not name them after her because no one knew they cultivated them from her body. Now that these human cancer cells were growing outside the body it would set in motion some amazing and some catastrophic results.

The cell growth research had many different purposes and now that the HeLa cells have grown outside the human body successfully, the research abilities sky rocketed. Many companies and organizations world-wide were scrambling to get their hands on these HeLa cells. Military tested them in containers by radiation, mice where sent into space to see what zero gravity would do to the human tissue, and even make up companies where buying and testing their products on them. The biggest break through however, happened when polio became and epidemic and they used Henrietta's cells to actually come up with a vaccination to it. Once they were able to do this that's when they thought that they might have the ability to find the cure for cancer right there in front of them, within the HeLa cells.

While the cells that were taken from Henriette Lacks has made many contributions to the world of science and medicine, there are many ethical principles that were violated along the way. One of the biggest issues that violated ethics was the second the cancerous cells were removed and cultivated from Henrietta's body without her consent and used in various experiments that would not even save her life to begin with. Second, is the fact that even though she later died they still did not consult the family and ask for permission to keep experimenting with the cells taken and started to sell and distribute them to other companies and organizations. The family did not receive any acknowledgement of this nor did they gain any proceeds or profit from their mother cells at all. Many feel that this happened because of the fact that no one might now want the HeLa cells if they knew that they came from and African American woman. Sense at that time the black community was still treated harshly.

Another part of the experiment that just does not seem ethical at all would be the fact that the scientists set up testing's at a maximum security prison in Ohio, and injecting the HeLa cells into the prisoners bodies underneath their skin was wrong. They did this not knowing what exactly would happen to them, and just wanted to know if the cells would spread as if they were contagious. The scientists got away with this because it was a volunteer experiment and those who signed up did it willingly. Just like they got away with taking the first cell samples from Henriette because doctors always have consent papers and others that need to be signed and if not read carefully you signed the dotted lines, whatever happens after is where you are held reliable.

Leonard Heyflick, a cell biologist, took the cell line development to another step and took samples cells from his newborn child and within hours was in front of a microscope to see if he could establish a cell line from the amnion from her. It was within minutes he noticed that those cells started to turn cancerous. This process is known as "spontaneous transformation" which is merely good cells in a culture turn into malignant cells with cancer properties almost instantly. Then came along a scientist name Stanley Gartler, who caused chaos in the scientific community. Gartler, who has studied countless major cell lines determined that all of them were secreted the same form of enzyme. The problem with this was that he said it was found only within the black community and all the cells he studied where white. At the time the only black cells that were saved and studied all over was the HeLa cells from Henrietta Lacks.

Once that started a controversy and doubt between scientist and cell biologist Gartler then comes to the conclusion that all the cells that everyone had been studying thinking that they were heart and lung cells weren't those at all. Instead stated that they were all one and the same and where to be those of Henrietta's. Ultimately this left many embarrassed but also amazed and concerned about their reproductive properties. Dr. Nelson-Rees discovered had a strong reproductive power to where only one cell had weather moved into the wrong culture dish by mistake or even by a small breeze would contaminate the entire cell. In fact he even discovered that building 41 that was completely air tight and had special ventilation, hosted what was supposed to be a cell growing from the breast ended up being contaminated and taken over by the HeLa cells. Shortly after that the Russians assumed that they had found the cancer virus only to later find out that the HeLa cells had not only made its way around America but all over the world. What Russia really had was a monkey virus that had come in contact with culture cells that had HeLa in them.

When Henriette died I don't think her or the family could have fathomed how far the scientific and medical fields would have come thanks to her cells. It seems even to this day, no one really understand why the HeLa cells are so extraordinary and why they seem to take over anything they come in touch with. Yet without those cells many illnesses, and disease such as Polio might not have been cured. These HeLa cells just left more questions. What is so different about these cells than others? What other discoveries can happen? Will scientists ever find the cure for cancer within these cells? Just as previous scientists and biologists before us, we must just wait and see what time will provide.

References

VIDEO (1997). Cancer Cell Research: The Way of All Flesh. From Films on Demand.

Demographic. (2015). In Merriam-Webster. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com