How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #13
"Everybody always saying Henrietta Lacks donated those cells. She didn't donate nothing. They took them and didn't ask [...] What really would upset Henrietta is the fact that Dr. Gey never told the family anything—we didn't know nothing about those cells and he didn't care." (169)
And with that, Zakariyya sums up the reason for the Lacks' family anger at the scientific community: they didn't know. For the Lackses, the sense of betrayal is magnified by their loss of Henrietta and the feeling that Really Terrible Things had been done to her while she was being treated at Hopkins. At the time Dr. Gey worked on HeLa, it wasn't even a consideration whether the family should be told about it.
Quote #14
With the ability to identify genes from a blood sample or even a single cell, the risk of a blood draw was no longer just a minor infection or the pain of a needle stick—it was that someone could uncover your genetic information. It was about a violation of privacy. (187)
As technology evolves, the ethics of research and practice has to play catch-up. Sometimes medical advances come so quickly that people haven't thought about the consequences. As Skloot points out, genetic information can easily be used to discriminate against people, especially in terms of insurance or employment. There are so many unintended consequences of cutting-edge medical advances that ethicists are way behind the game.