We’ve got your wife

[godix]

Occasionally a line in an article strikes me as hysterically funny. The latest of these was "We’ve got your wife. She’s alive in a laboratory. We’ve been doing research on her for the last 25 years. And now we have to test your kids to see if they have cancer."

The end of that article was kinda weak, so I wikied her. Here's the wiki article if anyone cares

[guy07]

That would be a messed up phone call to get ... how would someone even react to that? lol

[CodeZTM]

Wrote my final paper in Chemistry on her. A really really sad situation around that.

I'd love to say "thanks to these cells, we have modern medical wonders", but I hate saying "the ends justify the means", party because its cliche and partly because it's a weak argument and is selfish and arrogant.

In the long run of things, it's like [and I use this analogy LOOSELY] America taking all the land from the native Americans. Helpful to a large group of people,but it royally fucked up another group.

[Ileia]

[and I use this analogy LOOSELY]

Yeah, you're not so good at the analogy thing.

[Knowname]

Wrote my final paper in Chemistry on her. A really really sad situation around that.

I'd love to say "thanks to these cells, we have modern medical wonders", but I hate saying "the ends justify the means", party because its cliche and partly because it's a weak argument and is selfish and arrogant.

In the long run of things, it's like [and I use this analogy LOOSELY] America taking all the land from the native Americans. Helpful to a large group of people,but it royally fucked up another group.

Now I'd been on both sides of this issue, but I don't mind 'the ends justifying the means' at all... at least when they do. She'd probly like how the means turned out. It's like not honoring a departed loved one's final request! (another juxtiposed analogy for ya Ileia...) If she may have WANTED to give up her cells to research than why not do it? Now I'm saying a few too many 'may have's. I'm assuming a lot, but she wasn't asked but thinking of the times, I doubt anybody would ask a black woman such things. It's also a rather hard thing to ask ~.~

Now what I don't agree with, and agree with Code on is this:

"From that point on, though, the family got sucked into this world of research they didn’t understand, and the cells, in a sense, took over their lives.

How did they do that?
This was most true for Henrietta’s daughter. Deborah never knew her mother; she was an infant when Henrietta died. She had always wanted to know who her mother was but no one ever talked about Henrietta. So when Deborah found out that this part of her mother was still alive she became desperate to understand what that meant: Did it hurt her mother when scientists injected her cells with viruses and toxins? Had scientists cloned her mother? And could those cells help scientists tell her about her mother, like what her favorite color was and if she liked to dance.

Deborah’s brothers, though, didn’t think much about the cells until they found out there was money involved. HeLa cells were the first human biological materials ever bought and sold, which helped launch a multi-billion-dollar industry. When Deborah’s brothers found out that people were selling vials of their mother’s cells, and that the family didn’t get any of the resulting money, they got very angry. Henrietta’s family has lived in poverty most of their lives, and many of them can’t afford health insurance. One of her sons was homeless and living on the streets of Baltimore. So the family launched a campaign to get some of what they felt they were owed financially. It consumed their lives in that way."

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... z0ec1LxOl2

the former mess was excusable in the 50's concerning a mentally dead woman, but to mistreat a living family in the 90's? I'd think we're smarter than this.

An article linked to from the wiki says

"Ideas about informed consent have changed in the last 60 years, and the forms now given to people having surgery or biopsies usually spell out that tissue removed from them may be used for research. But Ms. Skloot points out that patients today don’t really have any more control over removed body parts than Mrs. Lacks did. Most people just obediently sign the forms.

Which is as it should be, many scientists say, arguing that Mrs. Lacks’s immortal cells were an accident of biology, not something she created or invented, and were used to benefit countless others. Most of what is removed from people is of no value anyway, and researchers say it would be too complicated and would hinder progress if ownership of such things were assigned to patients and royalties had to be paid. "

which gets to the point. We have measures now, be them formalitys or not, I just (sort of) hope the Lacks family got their dues. But perhaps I'm just being too sappy about this due to their 'poverty stricken' lifestyle. They deserve better but a true welfare system is just stupid. They deserve royaltys on this mess BUT the issue here is what of the millions of other ppl that have been 'victimized' in this way? Yes, only the Lacks case was the most successful, perhaps it was the ONLY successful one. And now you sign off on all that on your drivers license and again if your hospitalized. But what of ALL the ppl not included, those before and during the Lacks case? It is WAY too TCDT (too complicated didn't think ^_^) IMO.

I've been on both sides of this issue and my opinion is to just get your apology and let it go. (though it's fun to make an AMV about from time to time ^_^) Also them family is poor, they aint got nothin better to do. Lord willin' they do what they want iz all I iz sayin'.