Justified?
As the saying goes, ‘the ends justify the means’, essentially stating that when what comes out of the results is good enough so as to justify and perhaps even balance out the things done previously to get there. Yet, do the ends truly justify the means, and perhaps another important question to also ask is, does the progress made justify a violation in privacy?
A Look Back in History
While a simple lie to achieve a goal that could greatly improve a person or even everyone’s life, on one hand, could seem justified, yet a con artist’s manipulation of someone for a personal gain is seen as not only illegal but immoral to the greatest degree, hence the debate’s opposing views. No example reflects this as well as the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Lacks, in which Lacks’ doctor at Hopkins hospital took samples without consent to study and analyze for the possibility of growing immortal human cell lines but resulted in the largest cell line to ever exist.
Two sides of this argument with the HeLa cells: Dr. Gey, who took it without consent has done it in a time where such a thing was not standard practice and his research, work and ethics has indicated that his actions are of pure and selfless intent, all for improving the scientific community rather than for selfish means.
“But in fact, Gey’s history indicates that he wasn’t particularly interested in science for profit: in the early 1940s he’d turned down a request to create and run the first commercial cell-culture lab” (193).
Yet this leads to his sharing of such cancer cells, resulting in large corporations eventually stepping in and utilizing these cells without Lacks’ families’ knowledge to profit hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s true that an invaluable amount of discoveries, vaccines, and cures would not have been created without the cells, yet over the years the debate over what would’ve been considered theft raged on as well.
“There’s no record of Hopkins and Gey accepting money for HeLa cells, but many for-profit cell banks and biotech companies have” (194).
Alienating
A connection I can’t help but make would have to be to the 1979 science fiction horror film Alien, in which a crew unknowingly stumbles upon an extra-terrestrial creature the company Weyland-Yutani manipulated them to capture in spite of its risk. While the companies behind HeLa cells obviously aren’t as sinister to the extent of the film, such thirst for the scientific unknown and to produce new technology and amass wealth relates to these corporations, who, to them, are sacrificing nothing but names on a page, remaining detached and cold.
“Like most researchers, he’d never thought about whether the woman behind HeLa cells had given them voluntarily” (180).
The individualism and privacy were completely disregarded as Henrietta Lacks has been, partially for the own benefit of a group of elite individuals, showing that as important as progress can be, HOW you get there is equally important.
Bibliography:
- Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. Print.
- Alien. Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Sigourney Weaver. 20th Century Fox, 1979.