Why Are Henrietta Lacks Cells Unethical

Ethics are what we use to determine what is right from wrong. In science, it's a system of codes that describes what can and cannot be done by a scientist. When we talk about Henrietta Lacks cells, it's a case of a sacrifice for the greater good. Although the cells were taken from her without her consent when she was receiving cancer treatments, those cells allowed for scientists to develop the first polio vaccines and test chemotherapy drugs. All of these things had a dramatic effect, as they were able to cure debilitating diseases that were a serious danger at that point in time.
Also, she died because the treatments that were available at the time were unable to cure cancer. The treatments often did more harm than good. Her cells were able to help develop more reliable and safe cures. Her sacrifice was able to save and treat countless amounts of people. As it says on page 32, ¨the usual treatment was dosages of radium...However, those who handled the radium would most likely die of cancer from the radiation emitted by the radium.¨ No one fully understood cancer at the time, so radium and amputations were commonly used. These were not oftenly successful, and they were painful and dangerous procedures, and more often than not, the patient did not survive.
These were far worse than just scraping off a few samples of tissue. Procedures like lobotomies and the Tuskegee experiments, deep sleep therapy and human radiation experiments are just some of the scandalous and unethical procedures and studies that proved far more dangerous to the members participating. Scientists did not explain what they were doing to their patients and used the people involved as guinea pigs. Exposing them to painful and lethal amounts of radiation and drugs, or infected a large population with diseases to understand how it worked its course, and perhaps how to cure