The Well and Good Case 7.3, “Who Owns the Research? The Case of the HeLa Cells,” seems to me to be a clear case of unjust exploitation of a marginalized family. In the case, a poor African American woman dies of cervical cancer, and upon her death her tumor cells are taken and reproduced for science. As a result of the cell reproduction, many scientists and pharmaceutical companies made lots of money, but the family of the deceased woman saw none of the money.

In their book on medical ethics, Beauchamp and Childress present several theories of justice. The most appropriate theory of justice to apply here is the egalitarian theory of justice, which “emphasizes equal access to the goods in life that every rational person values, often invoking material criteria of need and equality” (Beauchamp and Childress 252). In this case, there is a clear good in life that every rational person values but not every rational person involved in the case got: money.

Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose cells started it all, was penniless at the time of her death, and after her death her family still lived in poverty. Years after the huge profits were made from her cells, her daughter was still in such a poor financial state that she was unable to pay to see a doctor. The doctors did so many things wrong in this case, and their actions were entirely unjust to both Henrietta Lacks and her family. First, they did not obtain her consent to taking her tumor cells and making money off them. While they tried to justify this action by saying that her treatment had been free, in my view, it is still clear exploitation to not expressly ask if her cells could be used for this purpose. Secondly, various companies made large profits from the cells of a person without compensating the person or her estate. These companies took a part of Henrietta Lacks and used it to make money without giving her or her family any share of the profits and without obtaining her consent to take the cells. That is exploitation and inconsistent with an attitude of justice. Finally, as mentioned before, there is an element of consent that is necessary here. Before using her cells to make money, the companies should have gotten the consent of either Henrietta Lacks or her family.

My central point here is that the goods were not distributed equally. A few greedy pharmaceutical executives made lots of money, and none of that money went to the Lacks family. The actions of the doctors and pharmaceutical companies were not just.

Another important aspect of this case was that the patient was an African American living during racial segregation. She was a member of a vulnerable population. As a society, we need to be extremely careful to ensure that vulnerable populations are treated justly. Every person needs to be treated with justice and equality, regardless of his or her ethnic or socioeconomic background. We have made great strides in treating vulnerable populations with justice, and we continue to make new innovations. For example, attached at the end of this post is a news report detailing how the influenza vaccine is being optimized for the elderly, a vulnerable population. While every innovation that ramps up protections for vulnerable populations may not be made in a scientific laboratory, the point is that there is hope for finding better ways to do things that provide justice and equality for all people, regardless of where they are coming from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtvLrgk_WIg

Bibliography:

Beauchamp, Tom L., and James F. Childress. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.