Henrietta Lacks was a 30-year-old black woman who found out she had cervical cancer during her fifth pregnancy, The tumor developed into an aggressive cervical cancer, shortly taking her life. Her doctors, however, harvested these cells without Henrietta nor her family knowing for more than two decades. While scientists profited fromHeLa by finding a vaccine for polio and other major medical breakthroughs, the Lacks ironically lived in poverty and could not afford health insurance. The Lacks were never given any profit from the HeLa cells.It is unethical for doctors to profit from an individual’s genetic information without valid consent. There are laws in place today to prevent such ethical infringement.

The opposing side might claim that Henrietta did consent to take her tumor cells as research.

According to an article: Bonnie Blodgett: The immortal life of George Gey, written by Bonnie Blodget he states, “Lacks, a cancer patient, did sign a permission form back in 1951, author Rebecca Skloot believes she was incapable of comprehending it” due to the pain she was on. It seems as if they took advantage of her state and manipulated her to sign the permission form.This makes her consent invalid. That still does not answer the question of why the doctors hid the information of HeLa cells from Henrietta’s family for multiple decades.

Many also oppose that the doctors from John Hopkins never made a profit over HeLa cells they were used for research purposes only. This may be true but, other scientists may have profited from HeLa since these cells were distributed everywhere, just because the hospital never made a profit fromHeLa doesn’t mean millions of scientists have not, according to an article called The ImmortalHenrietta Lacks written by (unknown author), mentioned that “ They were the first cells ever commercialized, and that was in the 1950s,” said Skloot”t.HeLa products can be bought for anywhere between $200 and $10000”, which can bringa large amount of money over the years.

Scientifically if people looked at this situation, there might not be a problem but ethically this is deceitful, in context this has nothing to with the millions of lives she saved, this has to do with how wrongfully scientists have approached this matter.Keeping the Lacks family in the dark, unjustly profiting Billions of dollars off of HeLa