Ari N. Schulman reviews The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a book about a poor Baltimore woman who discovered she had cervical cancer in 1951. Tissue samples collected from her (without her knowledge) are still being used today:
Henrietta Lacks, without question, should have been asked for permission for scientists to take, culture, and profit from her cells, and we are rightly indignant that she was not. But what would they have told her to help her make a decision that we could consider adequately informed? They could not have possibly conceived at the time of the things that would be done with her cells. And if they somehow could have, if they had been able to foresee the future — at least what has come of it so far — at best they could have told her something like the following: Your cells will help cure polio. Your cells will help sequence the genome and develop treatments for cancer. One rogue researcher will inject your cells into the healthy bodies of other people to see if they will contract the same disease that killed you. (They will.) Millions of people could be saved or helped using therapies created from your cells, and billions of dollars will be made from those treatments and your cells.
Your cells will be tinkered with in labs for decades or centuries by tens of thousands of scientists, fused with cells from animals, infected with all manner of diseases. One day men will travel into space, and pieces of you will go with them. And they will be used to test weapons that could destroy the world. Eventually, your cancer cells will multiply outside your body to far exceed the mass of healthy cells in your own living body. The cells that killed you will make you famous and, in a way, immortal.
The Dish 