Real World Topic 2 - HeLa - Worksheet, Dominique Pitman.docx

Real World Topic 2: HeLa Cells and Informed Consent Policy Question: How would you prioritize scientific innovation versus patient consent? Does the value of the use of HeLa cells justify the lack of informed consent? Explain your stance in your consensus statement. Background information: What do you need to know before you can make an informed recommendation? Why does this missing piece of information matter? (include social and science rationales) List your sources here. For each source, including the author, publication (e.g., journal or website name), and year. A. What does patient consent (informed consent) look like? In order to understand how to prioritize patient consent we need to know what it is and what it looks like. Knowing this could help us understand why some ethics are pushed aside for the concept of the “greater good”. 1. AMA-American Medical Association, Informed Consent , 2022. 2. American Cancer Society, What Is Informed Consent, 2019. 3. Nunez, K., What You Need to Know About Informed Consent, 2019. B. How does scientific innovation affect patient consent? Before we are able to prioritize scientific innovation and or patient consent we need to understand why they correlate, and why they affect each other. Basically the pros and cons of the implementation that the scientific community has regarding informed consent when it comes to scientific innovation. 1. Pacifico Silva, H., Lehoux, P., Miller, F.A. et al. , Introducing responsible innovation in health: a policy-oriented framework, 2018. 2. Science Direct, Ethical dilemmas in medical innovation and research: Distinguishing experimentation from practice, 2006. 3. Tauginiene L., Hummer P., Albert, A., Cigarini, A., & Vohland, K., Ethical

Challenges and Dynamic Informed Consent, 2021. This is an article I used in my statement but I didn’t include it in the above part: Johns Hopkins Medicine, The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks, 2022 After conducting background research, what is your stance? Insert parenthetical in-text citations* as appropriate. [This is your consensus statement. You will post this to the Discussion Forum on Canvas] How would you prioritize scientific innovation versus patient consent? Does the value of the use of HeLa cells justify the lack of informed consent? Explain your stance in your consensus statement. After conducting some research, I believe that patient consent should take precedence over scientific innovation, but I also believe that, under the appropriate conditions, scientific innovation should be permitted. I'm aware that some people could feel it's wrong to "bypass" a patient's consent, but I also feel we should ask ourselves that if the right circumstance arises then shouldn’t we take the opportunity to use it for the greater good (cringy, I know)? I say this under the condition that there should be compensation for the patient giving up some part of themselves for the sake of others. Knowing this, patient consent is something that is vital to many procedures and should absolutely be something that all healthcare providers follow, for the fact that it allows the patient to make decisions that could likely alter their being. However, in some cases when there is an emergency and “a decision must be made urgently, and the patient is not able to participate in decision making, and the patient’s surrogate is not available, physicians may initiate treatment without prior consent” (AMA-American Medical Association, 2022). This is just one of the many situations where consent may not be the first thing that comes to mind as a healthcare provider in a situation where human life is on the line. Unfortunately, for Henrietta Lacks this was not the case. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks went to the Johns Hopkins Hospital complaining of vaginal bleeding. Upon examination, there was found to be a large, malignant tumor on her cervix. Her cells from the tumor were taken through a biopsy and were found to have multiplied rapidly in a lab setting. In her case, her cells were taken without her consent, and even though the Johns Hopkins hospital has “never sold or profited from the discovery or distribution of HeLa cells and does not own the rights to the HeLa cell line”, it was “found that Johns Hopkins could have - and should have - done more to inform and work with members of the Henrietta Lack’s family out of respect for them, their privacy, and their personal interests” (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2022). Additionally, even though the collection of Henrietta’s cells was an acceptable and legal practice in the 1950s, doesn’t mean that such a practice should happen in today's modern times without a patient’s consent (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2022). On the other hand, the fact of the matter is that HeLa cells have helped millions of people and without the discovery of her cells there might have been more deaths than needed. Human life is saved all the time because of her cells and they continue to save lives because of their ability to be studied for things like the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones, and viruses on the growth of cancer cells as well as their ability to be used to test the effects of radiation and poisons, and to study the human genome (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2022).