2018 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

“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 ...

              My name is Dr. Sir Lord Keenan Kester Cofield. I am a certified  doctor and lawyer. Yes it is true that I also sued the guards and state officials of Alabama as well as McDonalds, Burger King, Four Seasons NYC, Coca Cola, and a newspaper for printing my obituary while I was in prison for “threatening to murder” (332) the governor of Alabama. No they were not “frivolous” lawsuits.(332) I contacted Deborah and offered to protect her if she sued the John Hopkins Hospital for medical malpractice which I believed had been committed against her mother. I went through the Hopkins medical school archives and discovered that there were doctors employed there that had lost their medical license and that one had been expelled from the AMA. After attempting to view Henrietta’s medical records with Deborah then being told to come back, I did. Upon my return I was told I was no longer allowed to view the records as they were private information. A...