Running head: TESTING WITH A POSSIBLE DEATH SENTENCE

Testing With a Possible Death Sentence
(An analysis of American mal-practice stemming from the Henrietta Lacks story)

Testing with possible death sentence We can perceive past and future medical advancement through two very different lenses. One lens is clean and colorful and paints an innovative and hopeful picture of the present and future, and therefore many folks enjoy looking through it and broadcasting it. The second is foggy, dirty and colorless, and depicts a sad and appalling look at a frightening past. This perception threatens us, as the haunting past often does. Needless to say, most people choose not to look the old lens and is rather kept occult. This is probably the reason that aside from bits and pieces of unethical experiments in our part of the world, I was simply not well-educated on the subject and never expected to hear about so many terrible incidents catalyzed by one patient’s cells. The historic lens shows us that “historically, the health care institution has failed, humiliated and ruined lives in the effort to improve medicine” (Robbennolt, 2009) , and it is important for us as social workers to look through that gloomy, grim lens and envision interventions that would have prevented it from becoming so. In a twisted irony of life, one woman’s ill fate, gave way to many discoveries that have saved many lives, but unfortunately at a heavy price for others. One such story involves a virologist named Charles Southam. The man I call the “The cancer needle gambler”
* How horrified would you be with the following scenario? A physician is conducting research on human immunodeficiency virus in 1982 is experimenting the possibility that it can be spread through saliva by having terminally ill patients ingest large quantities of saliva mixed with