1. What is your reaction to Henrietta's experience with John Hopkins Hospital in the first chapters of the book? How do her experiences compare with your own interactions with doctors and hospitals? How much of the difference between her experiences and those most of us are accustomed to are due to advances in medicine, and how much to can we attribute to her race and socioeconomic background? Do you think there is a dramatic difference today in the type of medical care that poor and/or marginalized members of our society receive and those who are relatively wealthy? For instance, do you think a poor, African-American woman diagnosed with cervical cancer today has the same prognosis as a wealthy white woman? Please use any personal experiences, observations, or antecdotes to explain your thoughts.
2. Pages 28-30 describe Dr. TeLinde's research goals, and his belief that since medical care was offered for free to poor people there was no dilemma in using their bodies as a source of cells and tissues for his own medical research. What is your first impression of the ethics of TeLinde's point of view? If you have taken Bioethics, or have some background in ethical rationales, please apply what you've learned in the past to this situation. There is no right or wrong answer to this question, so feel free to answer honestly.
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ReplyDelete1. A lot of the interactions between the doctors and Henrietta, especially with Henrietta's medical history, showed that there was a great deal of a disconnect, both when it came to how differently educated Henrietta was from the doctors, and consequently, how she had so much distrust for established science. This difference is clearly related to race, and as an extension of institutionalized discrimination, socioeconomic status. Of course, nowadays there is less of this gap, but there are still vast disparities of education and economic status as a result of slavery and discrimination. As a result, members of the the black community often probably experience a lack of information when it comes to medicine and science.
ReplyDelete2. If I had to apply bioethical frameworks to this situation, I could classify the doctor's justification as using the Common Good Approach, which would justify using these cells as a way to help society it the long run. This has certainly been the case, as HeLa cells have been highly beneficial to humanity.
1. The reason Henrietta goes to John Hopkins is because it is the nearest hospital that will treat colored people. The book mentions that most hospitals at the time would turn away a colored person even if it meant they would walk out of there and die right there in the parking lot. The ways that hospitals treated black people during the time of Jim Crow Laws is illustrated in this novel, black people are not treated right and are denied basic medical care. We also see that even black people who are treated at the John Hopkins hospital aren’t getting the full treatments they need, for example Henrietta had been told she needed many treatments for other illnesses but she was not educated in a way where she understood what they were and how they would help her so she denied them. She was able to go to the hospital but she was not fully treated for all her illnesses or treated anywhere near equal to the other white patients.
ReplyDeleteAll of my interactions with doctors have been with their full intentions of helping me and giving me the correct treatments, Henrietta is not given anywhere near the treatment that I receive today. There have been major advances in medicine since Henrietta’s experiences and mine but equal treatment by doctors has nothing to do with medical advances. Even today there is still a very large gap between the type of medical care that is given to poor people and the care given to rich people. I do not think that a poor African-American woman has the same prognosis as a wealthy white woman when they are both diagnosed with cervical cancer. I think today it has less to do with race and more with money but race is still a factor.
2. I believe that as a doctor he must tell his patients when he is taking a sample from them, whether they paid for their own medical care or not. Patients should be treated equally with the intentions that they will be taken care of as best as the hospital can offer in order to get better. I believe it is ok to use their cells for medical research but the patient must give consent over the use of their cells. I can see where TeLinde is coming from and what his beliefs are, but they are not ethical.
In the first part of the reading, a passage shows how Henrietta frequently did not go to the doctors for follow-up visits and appointments even when the doctors recommended them. I think a large part of her hesitation to seeking medical consultation stems from her unfamiliarity with medical terms and practices. The author also mentions that a cancer cell researcher in the hospital took cells from Henrietta even though she did not have full knowledge of what was happening to her. The hospital claimed that since she was receiving free medical care, donating some of her own cells could be seen as a form of payment. I think that hospitals’ tendencies to take advantage of poorer, black patients played a part in deterring them from hospitals. One example of this manipulation in full force is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that went on in the mid 1900s.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, the type of treatment people receive follows socioeconomic trends rather than purely racial trends. For people who cannot afford health insurance and regular checkups with primary care doctors, they are more likely to have to receive emergency treatments for preventable conditions. For those who regularly get tests and checkups, doctors can recognize medical conditions early and help the patient prevent more costly emergency treatments. Since minorities are more likely to be of middle or lower income, they will tend to need more emergency treatments compared to wealthier individuals.
1. Henrietta's experiences differ greatly from mine at hospitals and the treatment that I receive. First of all, as stated in the book, Henrietta would rarely pay visits to the doctor for a check up.She also had to go to John Hopkins because it was the nearest hospital that would treat her because she was colored. It is different now, because now, instead of the different treatment people receive being because of their race, it has become more about their sociology-economic status. Another difference would have to do with the advances in medicine.
ReplyDelete2. I think that Dr. TeLinde's research goal was unethical, because even though these people were being treated for free, it is wrong to use their cells and tissues for research purposes without their consent. Looking at this with a utilitarian approach, it might seem reasonable that these cells & tissues would later be used to benefit many more people in the future and advance medicine.However, using the autonomy framework, this would be considered unethical because it violated their autonomous right to make their own decisions and be consented about matter such as this one.