How justifiable is it to place the importance of science above conscience and humanity? Honestly, I don't know.
But Rebecca Skloot did a fine job in challenging me to ponder this issue - along with many others - by provoking the mind with a piece that is horrifyingly descriptive in some parts and emotionally complex in others. It forces you to look at the issues that no one wants to talk about - medical ethics, the appropriateness of taking human cells for research purposes, patents and profits and everything in between.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks presents a central irony - Henrietta Lacks' cells raked in millions of dollars for the companies who made use of them, but her family remains in the dark about all this and is living in poverty. You almost balk at how - forgive the language - "ignorant" some researchers are of the Lacks' suffering and their quickness to assume the Lacks' consent, understanding and pride in the issue.
When you think about it though, without HeLa cells, or other cell lines, we wouldn't have the abundance of medicine and vaccines to save countless lives today. If Henrietta Lacks had refused to give doctors control over her cells, lots more people would still be dying from polio today. It's a delicate situation that lacks an appropriate balance.
Perhaps the more pressing issue at hand is consent. She didn't know, and therefore had no power to say 'NO'. Even if she'd meant to contribute her cells to science, having the right to reconsider or refuse was the basic respect she deserved - the respect anyone today would have deserved. Not knowing what was going on - that was the spark that started the medical ethics wave.
I don't want to give too many spoilers here (though I suspect I might already have given a bit), so I'll leave the rest to your imagination. I personally believe it's a must-read for anyone involved in future medicine, and I highly recommend it for anyone who has used any form of medication, regardless of its research roots.
Henrietta Lacks' cells may not have given rise to all the medicine in the world today, but some place, some time ago, there were people just like her, who unknowingly - or knowingly - made our world a better place today.
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