Neither Dr. Wharton nor Dr. Gey did anything wrong by collecting cells from Hanrietta Lacks and growing them in the laboratory. The bigger picture, in 1950 scientists for decades had been trying to grow cell in laboratories without success and collecting samples without patients’ consent. Therefore, in environment where patients’ agreement for taking cell or tissue donor did not exist, Hanrietta Lacks’ case was not an exception from the universal procedure. Moreover, in case of Hanrietta removed samples of tissue did not cause any damage or influenced her disease or her treatment. If Hanrietta’s cell did not survive as millions of cells tested before her, the case of wrong doing by Dr. Wharton and Dr. Gey would not exists. Dr. Wharton and Dr. Gey followed the universal habit of the medical society of that time, taking samples and trying to grow cell, in order to find cells that could be grown to use for experiments and research. Since neither of doctors tried to gain profit from samples taken from anyone in their reach, their actions cannot be considered as a wrong doing because Dr. Gey and Dr. Wharton tried to advance science to help people like Hanrietta, and they collected samples without causing any damage to her health.
Moreover, growing Hanrietta’s cell in the laboratory by Dr. Gey did not cause any physical or emotional damage to Henrietta nor conducted unusual procedure of that time. I cannot deny or overlook emotional tragedy of Hanrietta’s family. However, the tragedy was caused by decades of segregation of American society, people seeking profit and capitalist society. From his side, Dr. Gey made attempts to protect Lacks’ family privacy like by non disclosing Hanrietta’ real name for some decades. For Dr. Gey Hanrietta was nameless donor of cells that he could use for greater good of humankind.
The conflict between science advancement and donor’s permission can be compared to conflict between religion and science advancement in German movie “The Physician.” The movie is about poor Englishman who disguised as a Jew traveled from England to Persia to study medicine from the famous healer. The conflict raised in the movie is between religion and science. More precisely, Islam prohibited opening sacred human bodies and learning God’s secret of man making, while medicine needed to open up bodies to know how to heal people. So religion did not allow opening human bodies and doctors needed to go around to advance science. The same situation is happing in our discussion where taking tissue samples without consent is justified by benefits to humankind. Doctors and scientists are justified to take and research samples without consent because they work for benefits of the humankind without physically hurting those from whom samples are taken. Moreover, asking for consent may trick people to give up their profit share if their donated tissue may be commercialized and may prevent scientists to get samples, for example, from people whose religious believes prohibit donating tissue or cells that would create a void in knowledge of certain groups of people. If humankind wants science to heal them, they have to let scientists to test their tissue and cells without restrictions.
The possible opposition is that people own their cells. Indeed, people have the right of ownership of their cells like musicians own their songs. In other words, if someone’s cells get into commerce or benefit humankind, the person has to get recognition and financial compensation as an owner of cells.