Ethics Archives

HeLa Cells for Sale: Some Profit While the Lacks Struggle

If you buy HeLa cells, who profits? Has the Lacks family ever seen any of the financial benefits from HeLa cells for sale? How did companies like Microbiological Associates make money while the Lacks family struggled? HeLa cells for sale show the potentially high profit from the cells taken from Henrietta Lacks. HeLa cells’ price does not include any royalty for the Lacks family. Learn about the inequity of HeLa profits, including how HeLa cells for sale are for commercial profit and not the Lacks family.

Chester Southam Secretly Injected People With Cancer Cells

Why do people have give informed consent before participating in a research study? Is it in part because of Chester Southam’s experiment? How many people did Dr. Chester Southam inject with live cancer cells? Chester Southam was a researcher at Sloan-Kettering who studied HeLa cells to see if you could get cancer from contact with the cells. Chester Southam’s experiment injected live cancer cells into people, many times without their permission. Learn about Dr. Chester Southam and his unethical research, including what happened to him when people found out.

Voluntary Consent in Medical Research: The Murky Situation

What makes it ethical to perform experiments on people? How does a doctor get permission to take blood or tissue samples from a patient? What type of voluntary consent or informed consent is needed? Voluntary consent is when a person willingly participates in a procedure or experiment. Informed consent in research requires the person to know what they’re agreeing to as opposed to just agreeing to do something. Read more about the issue of voluntary consent for Henrietta Lacks and informed consent in research using her cells.

Henrietta Lacks: Ethics Questions Raised by Use of HeLa

What ethics issues were raised by The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks? Did researchers have Henrietta Lacks’ consent to use her tissue? How have standards changed? In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, ethics are an important discussion. Henrietta Lacks’ informed consent was not considered in using her tissue for HeLa. Read about consent in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, ethics questions raised, and current informed consent requirements.

Richard Wesley TeLinde: Why Did He Take Henrietta’s Cells?

Who was the gynecologist that excised tissue from Henrietta Lacks? Why did Richard Wesley TeLinde want her cells? How did TeLinde use the cells for research? Richard Wesley TeLinde was a well-known gynecologist and the superior of the doctor treating Henrietta Lacks at Johns Hopkins. Dr. TeLinde was interested in the treatment and progression of carcinoma in situ, meaning noninvasive carcinoma. Learn about how Richard Wesley TeLinde’s research interests changed the course of science.

Victor McKusick: Did He Invade the Lacks Family’s Privacy?

Who was the geneticist that may have revealed Henrietta’s real name? How did Victor McKusick attempt to dupe the Lacks family? Did McKusick and his postdoctoral fellow Susan Hsu do anything wrong? Victor McKusick is the geneticist at Johns Hopkins that studied the genes of Henrietta Lacks’ family. He and Susan Hsu were working on the issue of HeLa contamination. Find out what Victor McKusick and Susan Hsu did, and whether it was legal.

Witness Tampering Examples: Osage Murder Trials

Why the Beautiful Forevers' Abdul Is in Legal Limbo

What’s witness tampering? How was this tactic used during the Osage murder trials? Witness tampering is an attempt to prevent or influence a witness’s testimony. Often, the goal is to keep the witness from telling the truth, therefore influencing the outcome of the case. Keep reading to learn how witness tampering factored in the Osage murder trials.

Guardianship Laws: How the Osage Were “Legally” Robbed

How did guardianship laws allow people to commit theft? What role did they play in the Osage Reign of Terror? Guardianship laws declared some adult Osage Tribe members incompetent so that “guardians” could control their money. This arrangement ultimately played a role in an unthinkable tragedy. Read more to learn about guardianship laws and the Osage murders.

News Bias: How Little Cues Sway Voters and Elections

What is a good media bias example? How do nonverbal cues reveal news bias on television? We’ll cover one news bias example in which newscasters’ nonverbal signals revealed how they really felt about the candidates during the 1984 presidential campaign. We’ll also look at how these unconscious facial expressions swayed viewer votes.

Household Finance Corporation: Billions of Profit for Fraud

What happened to Household Finance Corporation? Why did it have to pay a $484 million fine, and how did the scandal serve as a harbinger of the coming greed and deception of the subprime loan market? Household Finance Corporation was a leading corporation providing mortgage loans. It was merged with HSBC in 2004 after a loan fraud scandal. Learn how the Household Finance Corporation scandal affected customers and what the attitudes of the corporation’s leader and those tasked with protecting consumers say about the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.