Name ______Date ______Block ____
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Part III: Immortality – due Monday, December 12th, 2011
1. Read “Part III: Immortality” of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as well as the afterword. We highly encourage you to take notes while you read.
2. After reading, select one of the prompts and write a 2-page (double-spaced) response.
Prompts for Part III Written Response
1. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks raises many important issues surrounding the privatization of biological information.
a. Discuss the ethical issues surrounding the creation and privatization of the following cell lines: Dr. George Gey and HeLa; Dr. David Golde and John Moore’s T-lymphocytes; and Ted Slavin, who sold his own antibody producing cells. To whom do human cells belong once they are separated from the body?
b. “Science is not the highest value in society,” Andrews says, pointing instead to things like autonomy and personal freedom. “Think about it,” she says. “I decide who gets my money after I die. It wouldn’t harm me if I died and you gave all my money to someone else. But there’s something psychologically beneficial to me as a living person to know I can give my money to whoever I want. No one can say, ‘She shouldn’t be allowed to do that with her money because that might not be most beneficial to society.’ But replace the word money in that sentence with tissue, and you’ve got precisely the logic many people use to argue against giving donors any control over their tissues” (Skloot 321).
Do you agree with Andrews’ argument? Should a patient’s desire to feel in control of their tissues truly be the determinant of whether those cells can be used as deemed appropriate for the advancement of science and medicine? Is a patient’s sense of control more valuable than the potential scientific breakthrough?
c. As of 2005 – the most recent year figures were available – the U.S. government had issued patents relating to the use of about 20 percent of known human genes, including genes for Alzheimer's, asthma, colon cancer, and most famously, breast cancer. This means pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and universities control what research can be done on those genes and how much resulting therapies and diagnostic tests will cost. And some enforce their patents aggressively: Myriad Genetics, which holds the patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, charges $3,000 to test for the genes (Skloot 323-324).
What have been the consequences of the gene patenting movement? Do you believe that these patents will ultimately foster or hinder scientific progress and medical breakthroughs?
2. When reading Immortal Life it is very easy to make judgments about the choices the book's characters made in the past. However, there are several factors to consider:
a. What were the values, ethics, and morals of the time concerning race and medical research?
b. Is it appropriate to judge past actions with present standards of ethics?
c. How does the writer of the text influence how we view the different characters as she introduces them?
d. When we make judgments, are they really our own or are they imposed on us by the writer?
Discuss how each of these factors makes our understanding of Henrietta's story problematic, using specific examples from the text as evidence.
3. Civil society maintains its stability only when citizens have a sense of security and that sense is deeply tied to a system of strong, consistent justice. Most members of the Lacks family who we are introduced to in the book feel a sense of injustice at the hands of Johns Hopkins and medical researchers around the world who have benefited from studying and commodifying HeLa cells but have used none of that research or acquired wealth to help her family. For this reason, many of her family members, especially Zakariyya, often expressed anger, distrust, and hatred in ways that often frightened Rebecca Skloot.
a. Given the medical ethics at the time, are the Lacks family members really entitled to the medical and monetary benefits of HeLa research? Is the sense of entitlement that they feel justifiable given the impact that race and income had on their treatment in Johns Hopkins' medical ward?
b. Consider Dr. Golde's treatment of John Moore. Considering that Moore was white, male, and wealthier than Henrietta's family, will there ever be justice for the Lacks family?
c. How does the lack of caring and humanity associated with the medical and scientific staff at Johns Hopkins contribute to the sense of hopelessness we sense when we read about Henrietta's family and Lacks Town?
d. Finally, consider Henrietta's family's plight as a microcosm of the poor black experience: are poor blacks entitled to help out of hopelessness if systems of inequality, whether in the world of medicine, the courtroom, or the prison cell, are partly responsible for their suffering?
Requirements
· Typed responses are recommended
· Online submission is recommended
· Cite all sources of information (if using more than just the text)