Contemporary Issue Paper Term Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Contemporary Issue - Term Paper Example It appeared that neither Henrietta Lacks, nor her family gave any consent for the using her cells for any kind of the research. Only when a line called HeLa cells was created, the family got to know that the cells of their relative were unlawfully used for this line. â€Å"The downside of this story is that no one said anything to Lacks herself about taking her cells -- nor did anyone get permission from her family. And as the years went by, and some people began to make money from the cells no one ever revealed this to Henrietta’s descendants, as is told in Skloot’s wonderful book. But that failure has now been fixed† (Caplan, 2013). When the information about the results of the research of the cells, which belong to Henrietta Lack, were published by European Molecular Biology Laboratory, her relatives were surprised to find out about how the cells of Henrietta were applied â€Å"they eventually learned they had fueled a line called HeLa cells, which have gener ated billions of dollars, but they didnt realize until this spring that her genome had been sequenced and made public for anyone to see† (Caplan, 2013). The grandchildren of Henrietta considered such actions to be the violation of their rights and immediately contacted the laboratory with the request to withdraw the material about their family due to the lack of their consent for its publication. The researchers had to apologize and change the rules. New rules prescribe that two representatives of Lacks’ family will supervise the access to the information about their relative. Now every investigator, who plans to use HeLa cells for the research, must inform the relatives about the intention. However, they still did not receive any access to the profit that could be received from the line. The book about Henrietta Lacks and her case was published in 2010 with the title â€Å"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks†. This book, written by Rebecca