Who owns your cells? Legacy of Henrietta Lacks raises ethical questions about profits from medical research
cleveland.com: Aaron Goldenberg, professor at the School of Medicine and vice chair of the Department of Bioethics, and Mark Aulisio, department chair, discussed the ethics at play in the story of Henrietta Lacks, whose cervical cancer cells were used for medical research without her consent. Her family recently settled a lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific, one of the medical research companies that profited from her cells. “I think this is an especially important case because it’s not just about consent but it’s about how underrepresented and underserved communities have been treated by hospital systems in the past,” said Goldenberg. “Some of that mistreatment is personified in this case.”
