Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

Do we own our bodily tissues? This question has came about in many different situations. One example is with the Lacks family. In 1951, doctors removed some of Henrietta Lack’s cells without consent and formed a line of immortal cells, her cells. The Lacks family had no idea about Henrietta’s immortal cells and didn’t find out for years. Care must be taken to protect the patients from having their cells stolen. But how much protection? Who should own the tissue after it has been removed from the patient? Giving someone the rights to sell bodily tissue is questionable. Neither researchers nor patients should have rights to sell any human tissue.
What the law tells people about tissue ownership is very complicated and confusing. Even patients
It is legal to sell cells from: eggs, sperm, plasma, blood, breast milk, and hair (Park; Truog, Kesselheim, and Joffe 38). While it is currently illegal to sell, but legal to donate, internal organs, skin, corneas, bone, and bone marrow, it is legal to sell bone marrow extracted through peripheral apheresis, a method that draws marrow through the blood (Park). This extraction process shows that “marrow cells should be considered a fluid like blood,” and therefore legal to sell (Park). As new technologies like these emerge, the issue of tissue ownership, sale, and donation grows more complicated because there are more distinctions being made about what kinds of tissues can be bought and sold. In order to have clear and concise guidelines, regardless of the technology involved, it should not be legal to sell any human tissue for
Patients can’t claim ownership of the tissues removed because of certain laws, so patients can’t make money from their removed tissues while doctors can. For example, a patient isn’t allowed to take his or her appendix home after an appendectomy (Schmidt). Patients have to give consent for bodily tissues to be used in research (Truog, Kesselheim, and Joffe). It does not offer enough safety for the patient, as when a patient dies, tissues donated can be used for medical use, or “processed and sold for profit and become such items as bone putty and collagen” (Josefson). Even though patients dying give consent for their cells to be used in research, they most likely do not know they are also allowing for their tissues to be sold for profit. Which is not fair because someone else is profiting from their tissues and they don’t even know about it. Even though the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 doesn’t allow selling of organs tissue, tissue banks make a profit through use of loopholes: “tissue banking is big business and the law is readily side-stepped by invoking ‘processing and handling fees’ so that the tissue itself is not officially sold” (Josefson). So, tissues donated are usually sold through unofficial “fees” without any consequences. These examples