In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Doctor George Gey sacrificed Henrietta’s privacy to gain success, he removed her tumor cells without her consent and sold it worldwide, which could grow infinitely, meaning scientists no longer had to do experiments on living things, which solved a lot of ethical problems, taking the development of science to the next level. Ironically, what’s unethical about this story was that George Gey and “his HeLa cells” became well-known names across the world, while Henrietta Lacks, the contributor of the HeLa cells, was ignored.
“Henrietta knew nothing about her cells growing in a laboratory” (Skloot, 42).
Henrietta became an unsung hero, what’s worse was that her family didn’t receive any benefits from her cells, it even took her children 2 decades to figure out exactly what happened to their mother.
The story of Henrietta Lacks reminds me of another unsung hero, Joseph Swan, the person who invented the Light bulb before Thomas Edison, Swan debuted his preliminary light bulb 8 months before Edison, but Edison improved on the light bulb, in which he eventually got all the credits. This is just light George Gey making HeLa cells useful but stole the credits and attention from the contributor. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to improve on someone else’s idea, but getting all the credits for it makes it very unfair for the people who contributed to the success of something.