BLATANT CONTRADICTIONS PASSED OFF AS TRUTH: The new understanding between the NIH and the Lacks family does not include any financial compensation for the family. The Lacks family hasn’t, and won’t, see a dime of the profits that came from the findings generated by HeLa cells. But this is a moral and ethical victory for a family long excluded from any acknowledgment and involvement in genetic research their matriarch made possible. ALSO: a long-standing wrong has now been fixed. ALSO: But the real news here is that medicine and science have finally done right by the person from whom those cells were taken—Henrietta Lacks. ALSO: And as the years went by, and some people began to make money from the cells no one ever revealed this to Henrietta’s descendants, as is told in Skloot’s wonderful book. But that failure has now been fixed. So many entities owe the Lacks family money, including the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, which published private information about their familys DNA. The European group pulled the paper and apologized to the Lacks family for putting their privacy at risk. NOT ENOUGH! ALSO: No family member ever said they expected money, but right in the middle of the meetings, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that naturally occurring genes could not be patented, making the issue of compensation much less important. - No! Its not that the issue is less important, its just more difficult to resolve. For those of us who know Americas history, it is not surprising that yet again, many white people have made billions of dollars off of a black family who remains uncompensated. The fact that this piece was written by an resident ethicist at a prestigious hospital scares but does not shock me.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 12:45:59 +0000
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