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Henrietta Lacks Informed Consent

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Informed consent is an important topic and the most prominent central idea in The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Informed consent is the permission for treatment by a patient to a doctor while fully knowing all possible risks and benefits to any procedure. However, Henrietta Lacks was not given informed consent at all, she had tissue stolen from her with no idea of what was happening by none other than John Hopkins Hospital, the hospital promising that “the indigent sick of this city and its environs...who require surgical or medical treatment...who are stricken down by any casualty, shall be received...without charge.”
The idea of informed consent first emerges in the section called “Diagnosis and Treatment.” This chapter is discussing a doctor named TeLinde, and his theories about cervical cancer that he believes could save many women’s lives. However, first he must prove to the medical community that his theory is correct and won’t harm any patients. In order to do so, TeLinde …show more content…
Bobbette, Henrietta’s daughter-in-law, speaks of how little girls used to disappear off the streets, and that when she was a child, “when it got dark, {Bobbette] had to be on the steps, or Hopkins might get [her].” The story then shifts to John Moore, whose spleen was sold for a large profit without his consent. However, John Moore was middle class white man, who had the money and intelligence to hire a lawyer. John Moore’s case also happens to occur in Los Angeles, all the way across the country from Henrietta’s case, showing that not only can uninformed consent occur to poor and uneducated people who would be unable to obtain a lawyer if they were even aware that a lawyer was necessary, but also middle class white males have been taken advantage of and treated like they were no longer a person, but just a means of creating a profitable

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