The struggle between ethics and medicine, tug-of-war between groundbreaking research and patient care remains a common one in the day and age of cutting-edge innovation and discovery. Rebecca Skloot decided to highlight this moral dilemma in the early 2000’s, just as this “medical subspecialty” started to emerge as a “high profile” concern (Embree). As a result of ten plus years of research, Skloot presents a compelling narrative, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, featuring the medical diagnoses and plights of protagonist Henrietta Lacks, a middle school educated African American woman living in America in the 1950s. Rebecca Skloot is persuasive in her reveal of the story behind the “immortal” HeLa cells and the impact on the Lacks’ family. She focuses on conveying the controversial issue of medical consent for research and the experimentation involving racial discrimination. Skloot imparts Henrietta’s personal story upon adjusting to living with and accepting the cervical cancer for which she was diagnosed. By refraining from portraying Henrietta as a textbook case and instead a real person, as she is, Skloot strengthens the emotional relationship between the audience and the narrator. Her story is relatable and evokes raw emotion and frankly, disenchantment in our society. Henrietta’s demise is heartbreaking, as is the fact that Johns Hopkins Hospital took a biopsy of her tumor and used the cells to conduct research without her permission. Her cells became renowned as the first cells to infinitely reproduce in a lab and were sold for billions for further research; however, the Lacks family remained completely unaware of these transactions and were never reimbursed. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks reads like a fictitious novel because of the conversational feel but the potent issues that resonate with the medical community foment the layperson reading this novel as well. Skloot successfully juxtaposes the two. Because consent was not involved in this decision, there are many unanswered questions, including but not limited to: Should there be a reimbursement (the Lacks’ family tried to sue Hopkins as recently as 2017) for the use of family cells? Are there any precautions being taken to further protect Henrietta’s files and personal information? Is it still necessary to have to worry about the invasiveness of the press? A newly released, play-on-words Hopkins Journal, “The Johns Hopkins University Disorientation Guide 2018,” even mentions the lack of ethical procedure in the HeLa case that occured over fifty years ago – the topic is still prevalent. Lack of consent is not only a problem present in the medical community but is becoming a matter of contention in many other social, economic, and political areas. College campuses nationwide are implementing discussions, presentations, and mandatory trainings for students and staff in order to define a clear line and erase the “gray area.” Sixty-seven years later, Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cells continue to capture the attention of millennials today and foster discussion that has the potential to make radical changes in society today.
Embree, Joanne. “Medical Ethics: Debates, Dilemmas and Decisions.” Advances in Pediatrics., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2000.