The story of Henrietta Lacks: an opportunity to make up for past mistakes
Main Article Content
Keywords
Informed consent, discrimination, Henrietta Lacks
Abstract
In the current time, when COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting Black people in several countries, the Henrietta Lacks’s centennial year remembers the responsibility to guide in a fairer era of research. The cells of Henrietta Lacks, taken without her consent, have been reproduced billions of times for medical purposes. The Henrietta Lacks’s anniversary urges to face with an issue still unsolved, since the consent to the collection of patients’ data, the methods of their archiving and their possible dissemination remains a complex question that is largely outstanding so far. In addition, the anniversary - in such a pandemic era - represents an opportunity to make up for past injustices and discrimination of the healthcare system.
References
2. Battistuzzi L, Ciliberti R, Bruno W, Turchetti D, Varesco L, De Stefano F. Communication of Clinically Useful Next-Generation Sequencing Results to At-Risk Relatives of Deceased Research Participants: Toward Active Disclosure? J Clin Oncol 2013; 31-32;4164-5.
3. Ciliberti R, Alfano L, Baldelli I, De Stefano F, Bonsignore A. Self-determination, healthcare treatment and minors in Italian clinical practice: ethical, psychological, juridical and medical-legal profiles. Acta Biomed 2018; 89(1):34-40.
4. Ciliberti R, Gulino M, Gazzaniga V, et al. A survey on the knowledge and attitudes of Italian medical students toward body donation: Ethical and scientific considerations. J Clin Med 2018;7(79).
5. Fusco R, Larentis O, Cermesoni B, Ravagnan A, Tesi C. The "Mummy of Erba": A study proposal for the analysis of a mummified Egyptian specimen. Med Hist 2018; 2(3):163-5.
6. Henrietta Lacks: science must right a historical wrong. Nature 2020; 585(7823):7.
Article Sidebar
Article Details
How to Cite
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Transfer of Copyright and Permission to Reproduce Parts of Published Papers.
Authors retain the copyright for their published work. No formal permission will be required to reproduce parts (tables or illustrations) of published papers, provided the source is quoted appropriately and reproduction has no commercial intent. Reproductions with commercial intent will require written permission and payment of royalties.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Alessandro Bonsignore, University of Genova, Italy
DISSAL - Department of Health Sciences, Section of Forensic and Legal Medicine