Improving The Health Of The Population - 1559 Words

Should improving the health of the population be more important than that of the individual? This is the controversy that surrounds the idea of public health, and specifically, the life of Henrietta Lacks. Public health can be explained as the desire to do what is deemed necessary to keep society as a whole in a healthy state, by eliminating possible causes that may be leading to detrimental outcomes in the health of our nation. It is the research of cures, immunizations, quarantining, and raising public awareness in an effort to stop the spread of disease among the community. However, there is a large amount of gray area when it comes to what is right and wrong in terms of placing the health of the nation as a whole over the health†¦show more content†¦She received radiation treatments at John Hopkins’ hospital, however at this time, there was a disadvantage in being an African American, because it was unlikely you were given the same quality of treatment and car e as a Caucasian. When Henrietta’s cells were extracted from her cervix, she was not informed that a part of her body was being used for medical research. However at the time, there was little regulation regarding the ownership over one’s own body parts and tissue, so lawfully nothing was considered illegal. Although this would play hardly any role in the life of Henrietta, the toll it took on her family was quite large. The controversy of the HeLa cells revolved around the principle of ethics in public health. Since Henrietta’s cells were taken without permission from neither her nor her family, it is shown that there is a lack of regulation in the law that controls one’s ownership or lack there of over their tissues. Although at first this seemed to not be an issue, it deeply altered the lives of her descendants, even though it didn’t affect Henrietta directly while she was still alive. The emotions revolving around the feeling of immortalit y of Henrietta’s cells left some of her ancestors very uncomfortable with the fact that their mother, sister, wife, and aunt was being shipped around the