Henrietta Lacks Analysis

1. What was the chief injustice of the book? The chief injustice of this book was the lack of informed consent and repeated privacy violations. Henrietta Lacks, as a patient at John Hopkins Hospital, had not been informed that samples from her cervix had been collected, nor had she been asked if she was interested in being a donor (p. 33). No one bothered to explain to the Lacks family the science behind HeLa cells, and the so the family was never informed of the removal, distribution, or sale of Henrietta’s HeLa cells. The family was kept in the dark. The family did not know what came to be of Henrietta’s cells after they discovered HeLa contributions, because no one ever gave them the necessary information to understand what was happening,
Paul Starr (The Social Transformation of American Medicine [Library of Congress Cataloging in Public Data, 1982], pp. 14-15) describes medical paternalism, as fulfilling an authoritative role to make judgments on the needs of clients. In the case of Henrietta Lacks, this form of paternalism transformed into a violation of her health; Henrietta told her doctors several times that she believed her cancer was spreading, but they found nothing wrong with her. Henrietta returned to John Hopkins three months after her delivery, complaining of a knot in her womb, but her doctors had not noted anything about a tumor during her delivery, or her 6-week visit. It seems unlikely her doctors missed it; they chose not to tell her. In her medical records, there is no indication she questioned her doctors. She was susceptible, as most patients were at this time, to what Skloot describes as “benevolent deception”. This was when doctors would withhold vital information from their patients. This was done to prevent patients from being hurt or confused with unfamiliar terms. In this era of medical paternalism, it was believed that doctors knew what was best, and to question them in any way was to gamble with your own