Moral Obligation: Cofield’s Opinion


“I think people are morally obligated to allow their bits and pieces to be used to advance knowledge to help others. Since everybody benefits, everybody can accept the small risks of having their tissue scraps used in research.”-David Korn, Harvard University


            I do not believe in “moral obligation.” I believe in legal obligation. When the Lacks family lead me to believe that the HeLa cells belonged to them because they were related, I fought for their rights to compensation and rights to the cells. As the legal relatives I believed that they had rights as they cells were taken and used for science without the knowledge of the subject (Henrietta) or the family. The family having also never recieved compensation for the research being done and the advances made, deserved what they were due. I believed “Hopkins was guilty of medical malpractice, and that it was time to sue for the family’s cut of all the money Henrietta’s cells had earned since the fifties.”(331) However, since I believe in law rather than morals, I did my research and it was revealed that Henrietta was not a legal member of the Lacks family. Seeing as she was born as Loretta Pleasant and  never legally changed her name to Henrietta Lacks. Therefore in the eyes of the law the Lacks family has no rights as they do not share a name. This lead me to believe that this was an “obvious fraud and conspiracy.” (334)
     So let it be understood that if the family has legal ownership of the cells, then they are not morally obligated to lend the cells to scientific research. Yet, if they do not have legal ownership or simply do not care what happens to the cells, then I believe that science has the right to use the cells for research.

Cancer cells 



The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks/id418646893?mt=11


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