Henrietta Lacks is unique in medical history. By chance, her cancer cells held special medical significance, which doctors and scientists discovered after harvesting the tissue post-mortem. The event occurred 50 years ago and the family of Henrietta was not told that her cells were taken. This decision is perfectly in line with medical ethics of the time, though it sits uncomfortably with our modern sensibilities. But ethics do change over time -- they are directly related to values held by the larger culture. In the 1950s, medical experimentation of this caliber was new, and it did not even cross the researchers' minds to inform the family. As Grady mentions in her article, there were other issues involved, including differences in race, class and education between the family and the researchers. Lacks was poor and black and the researchers were rich and white. The doctors probably felt that the family would not understand the complexity of the science involved and would not be in a position to object regardless. Should the doctors have made a different decision? No, not at the time in which they lived and the information they had at the time.

The issue that really complicates the Lack situation is deciding whose property the cells are. Since Henrietta Lack is dead she cannot, in any way, own property, so they are not hers. The real question is whether or not the cells are the property of her family. Grady points out that her family remained poor and had no health insurance and a host of mental and physical illnesses, implying that the money made from the cells could have helped her family. But this seems to be an appeal to the heart and not to the logic of ethics. What if the family had been secretly wealthy and the profits would not have helped them. Would the argument remain the same, that the family deserved to know? Probably not. As Grady mentions in her article, scientists have argued that "Mrs. Lacks's immortal cells were an accident of biology, not something she created or invented, and were used to benefit countless others." I agree with this position. As much as it might tug on our heart strings, the cells are now the property of the scientific community, and we should all be thankful for the discoveries her cells have enabled.