I had this book with me when I traveled to Melbourne and pretty much couldn’t put it down for the first two days. Now on the bookshelves in Australia, do check it out! Rebecca Skloot on the Colbert Report.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Rebecca Skloot | ||||
|
||||
![[Valid RSS]](http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/9879/validrsscf0.png "Validate my RSS feed")
{ 10 comments }
Rebecca’s sentence grabs you from the first sentence.
There’s a certain joy in knowing that I have pac-man cells running about through my body.
I found a table-top PacMan at my local pizza place! Didn’t have any coins though, damn.
It’s shameful that *anyone* should be denied access to healthcare, but … since neither Henrietta nor her descendants contributed their time, effort or ingenuity to the processes that followed, it isn’t clear that there’s a strong moral case for them to be compensated or remunerated for her unwitting contribution.
Colin – seriously, read the book. Get a little more understanding as to the ethical issues as to what happened and the continuing struggle for people to establish rights as to what happens to their bodies due to medical testing. :/
In her 2010 book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot documents the histories of both the HeLa cell line and the Lacks family. Henrietta’s husband, David Lacks, was told little following her death. Suspicions fueled by racial issues prevalent in the South were compounded by issues of class and education. For their part, members of the Lacks family were kept in the dark about the existence of the tissue line, and when its existence was revealed, family members were confused about how Henrietta’s cells could have been taken without consent and how they could still be alive 50 years after her death.
Tuskegee syphilis experiments
Informed consent
Human experimentation under Nazi era
Kylie, haven’t read the book, have read a fair bit about this sort of issue, thanks. The way this was communicated to H’s husband sounds highly problematic, for sure. But the issue of attributing property rights over extracorporeal body parts is problematic, for all sort of reasons.
It may well be that the researchers acted unethically, but the corollary of that is not, IMO, that Henrietta’s descendants ‘deserve’ sackloads of money.
Again, it seems to me that the main issue is that *no-one* should be deprived of access to healthcare due to poverty, not that someone lucky enough to have the unearned primary natural good of an unusual genotype should be plucked from that poverty.
Btw, the analogy with Tuskagee is highly dubious; people were really *harmed* due to that disgraceful experiment.
Actually, that analogy isn’t dubious. Did you see me write ’sackloads of money’, btw? I find no evidence of that statement from me…
I think the book does an excellent job of outlining the issues in the final chapters, but again – it’s a matter of you finding out for yourself.
What I can say is that Henrietta was harmed by what happened to her and it is detailed in the book –
Diagnosed with cervical cancer, Henrietta underwent treatment (radium tubes sewn into her vagina, followed by radiation treatments that scorched her skin). Initially, the doctors thought that the treatments were successful, but the tumors soon spread and Henrietta eventually died a very painful death from uremic poisoning (due to the tumors, she couldn’t pee, meaning the toxins built up in her body). The depiction of how her body was burnt and how she was treated after death and how her medical records were given out unethically to the media for release certainly deserves a comparison. Some of the things may be (arguably) ‘how cancer was treated at the time’ but some elements were certainly quite unique in how she was taken advantage of – even after death.
In addition, her descendants had samples taken from them without being informed and there was also a significant delay in them knowing what happened to her cells. There are also other cases detailed in the book where people were not given the opportunity to give informed consent and the HeLa case was used as an example against them (essentially, ‘Lacks didn’t give permission; they use HeLa in scientific testing; so why ask anyone else for permission’?)
Perhaps not everything about the case is readily available in what you’ve had access too so far? There are cases that show people are attempting to get recognition that use of their body parts in scientific research – it’s illegal to take people’s kidneys but legal to take people’s cells? – deserves compensation.
In short, get a copy and find out for yourself, it’s well worth it.
It doesn’t dismiss that it’s problematic but will show that there’s more to the story than you might realise.
Fairy nuff.
If people have questions about the book – Rebecca Skloot answers them on her site:
Thank you so much for that. I have worked with HeLa cells in the lab and many of these things have names that suggest origins. TAQ DNA polymerase is from Thermus aquaticus. It is a very complex situation that extends into areas of existentialism and government. I have studied that cell line many times over the years. It seems that nature has prior art and as such is CC share-alike. It is much like an idea. If I have an idea that telomerase extends life because I observe it, does that mean I can control the use of telomerase? People shed their cells and thus DNA everywhere they travel and if we now keep track of what is done with that, it seems an impossible task.
Comments on this entry are closed.