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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5690395 No.5690395 [Reply] [Original]

Can any biofags explain to me what exactly this means?

>> No.5690400

http://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181

>> No.5690405

>>5690400
Okay but has that got to do with feminism?

>> No.5690407

Ethics.

>> No.5690409

Basically JHMed took her cells for experimentation without telling her or without paying her a dime. This story is more about -- SURPRISE -- universities have often thrived on the backs of the urban poor for their experimentation. It had way more to do with her being poor than it did about her being a woman.

>> No.5690422

>>5690405

Nothing. Classism or scientific ethics would be more of an issue

>> No.5690426

>>5690395
this individual believes it is an affront on her rights that a doctor remove a tumour and then said, hey, lets do research with these cells.
this stems from the idea that an individual has ownership over their body and whatever was once a part of it. this belief is erroneous and in fact an individual only really owns their thoughts and ideas; everything else is given to them

>> No.5690440

>>5690426
It's a pretty dick move to base a sizable portion of medical science on her cells and let her and her family get jack shit in return. Biological supply companies make tons of profit off selling her cells.

I really don't give it shit about whatever natural rights argument you're alluding to. Ethics, especially in fucking medicine, would demand us not to be dicks in the pursuit of making the world better. Otherwise, the gains we make tend to be soured.

>> No.5690446

>>5690426
Its also erroneous because she was broke-ass black bitch.

Having read the book, I really dont see what the big deal was. People had tried to explain that shit to her family, but they were all too damn ignorant to understand. She, and I believe her husband, signed her cells away to science.

End of story.

>> No.5690450

>>5690440
>Ethics, especially in fucking medicine, would demand us not to be dicks in the pursuit of making the world better. Otherwise, the gains we make tend to be soured.
here you are wrong, perhaps only in semantics. ethecs indeed demands we sacrifice the good of the few for the good of the many. it is morals which demand that this woman be compensated for the fact that her cells were taken.
if i could cure cancer at the cost of personally wringing the necks of ten thousand newborn infants, i would do so, along with a great many other people.

while her cells were used to great effect, it is by none of her own merits that that is the case. she is not a hero or a genius. she simply had the poor luck of getting cancer. the doctors which ended up using her cells did not extract the tumour to use the cells; they did it in an attempt to save her life. and like any enterprising individual, instead of looking for cells from a willing volunteer, they simply took the ones in front of them

>> No.5690461

>>5690440

That's a load of horseshit and you know it. It's not like she worked to induce those mutations; hell, she probably DIDN'T do something right to cause them.

Her compensation was them trying to save her ass from cancer.

Companies make profit off her cells because growing, maintaining, and shipping cell lines is not trivial.

>> No.5690463

>>5690450
>ethecs indeed demands we sacrifice the good of the few for the good of the many. it is morals which demand that this woman be compensated for the fact that her cells were taken.

You have no idea of how ethics vs. morals work. What you've described as ethics is utilitarianism, which is only one (of many) school(s) of ethics. Utility is completely arbitrary and relative; you cannot objectively say that 10000 dead newborns is worth the cure for cancer (by the way, stupid fucking scenario). What if I factor in "we are a society that does not kill newborns" as a component of utility? Then, killing all those newborns would create less perceived utility and argue against the cure for cancer.

>they did it in an attempt to save her life. and like any enterprising individual, instead of looking for cells from a willing volunteer, they simply took the ones in front of them

By taking advantage of her ignorance (which is apparently okay according to >>5690446) and then profiting massively off the sale of those cells.

It would have been trivial to grant her a tiny bit of royalties to lift her out of poverty.

>> No.5690477

>>5690461
>It's not like she worked to induce those mutations; hell, she probably DIDN'T do something right to cause them.

Yeah, if I find oil on my property, I shouldn't get the rights to it because I didn't kill all those dinosaurs and ferns. Bodily sovereignty is fairly important. Wouldn't you be disturbed to have somebody take a piece of you, make millions off of it, and give you nothing?

>Her compensation was them trying to save her ass from cancer.

That's retarded, since when the hell was cancer treatment (or any form of health care) a form of compensation? We try to cure people of cancer because it's the right thing to do, not as some bargaining chip to hold hostage.

Also, the cancer treatment in this case is purely contextual. What if it was benign? Would that mean she was deprived of compensation? The heart of the matter is that "should we be benefiting (financially and otherwise) off peoples' bodies without informed consent and due compensation?"

>Companies make profit off her cells because growing, maintaining, and shipping cell lines is not trivial.

But paying her some royalties would have been trivial. Absolutely trivial, considering how much profit's been made.

>> No.5690501

>>5690409
This. I think technically the law gives ownership of anything removed from a human body to the person who removed it (the doctor). I'm not sure if there have been many cases about this though I'm sure I've read about it at some point. I don't want to give incorrect info cause I also watched a dumb movie with this plot and it got jumbled in my head. In the movie some company makes billions on research from some shit gained from someone's body and the ancestors want a cut of it.

>> No.5690505

>>5690463
hey man, ethics may dictate you do certain things to not screw people over (make their lives worse) and those are often followed pretty closely. However, ethical considerations which give someone else any kind of leg-up, or those which require you to go far out of your way, are hardly ever followed.

>> No.5690507

>>5690477

>Yeah, if I find oil on my property, I shouldn't get the rights to it because I didn't kill all those dinosaurs and ferns.

Land ownership, in some way, equates to someone actively doing something to obtain the rights to said land.

Furthermore, you doing the finding of the oil also equates to work.

Someone getting cancer does not equate to work. Performing surgery to get a tissue sample equates to work.

>Wouldn't you be disturbed to have somebody take a piece of you, make millions off of it, and give you nothing?

If I were Helen Lacks, I would be dead, ergo not disturbed. If I were her relative, I would not exploit her affliction to my benefit.

Compensating the family for the loss of an able-bodied individual is the limit of sensibility. That's what life insurance is for.

>
That's retarded, since when the hell was cancer treatment (or any form of health care) a form of compensation? We try to cure people of cancer because it's the right thing to do, not as some bargaining chip to hold hostage.

She was a poor black woman who could not afford the treatment. Say what you want about medicine ethics dictating treatment should be freely administered; it has a cost in time and resources.

Here your argument falls apart. Why should someone (or some group of people, e.g., a hospital) dispense treatment without compensation (because she could not afford it) yet through no merits of her own, she should be compensated?

Work = no pay
No work = pay

>Also, the cancer treatment in this case is purely contextual...

Not really. The fact that her cells were not benign and instead so aggressive and adaptable was the reason she died in 10 months. Treatment (should could not afford) for a benign tumor would have been compensation.

>But paying her some royalties would have been trivial. Absolutely trivial, considering how much profit's been made.

Not really considering she died the same year she was diagnosed.

>> No.5690522

>>5690507
>Land ownership, in some way, equates to someone actively doing something to obtain the rights to said land.
What if it's inherited? Is feeding myself and keeping my cancer cells alive not a a type of work? Am I not entitled to inheritances because they are the products of my parents' work? Terrible line of reasoning.

>Furthermore, you doing the finding of the oil also equates to work.
If we're going by the "work = ownership" idea, that means I get the rights to oil found on other people's property.

>Someone getting cancer does not equate to work. Performing surgery to get a tissue sample equates to work.

Walking to the clinic to get the biopsy equates to work. Again, the work = ownership idea is absurd.

>II were Helen Lacks, I would be dead, ergo not disturbed.

Way to dodge the point.

>If I were her relative, I would not exploit her affliction to my benefit.

Exactly, you would want the freedom to decide whether you want to exploit her or not. They were never given that choice.

If you are happy to forfeit the rights, go ahead (assuming you would have the option to forfeit in the first place), but I would choose differently if I were impoverished.

>Compensating the family for the loss of an able-bodied individual is the limit of sensibility. That's what life insurance is for.

I don't see what this has to do with anything.

>> No.5690545

>>5690507
>She was a poor black woman who could not afford the treatment. Say what you want about medicine ethics dictating treatment should be freely administered; it has a cost in time and resources.

>Here your argument falls apart. Why should someone (or some group of people, e.g., a hospital) dispense treatment without compensation (because she could not afford it)

Why should emergency rooms stabilize people without insurance? Society has collective pacts (usually health insurance schemes) to fund health services. In her case, it was likely Medicaid. Free clinics also exist.

>yet through no merits of her own, she should be compensated?

Because it was a part of HER body. Why does she need to justify sovereignty of her own being? That's ridiculous.

>Not really. The fact that her cells were not benign and instead so aggressive and adaptable was the reason she died in 10 months. Treatment (should could not afford) for a benign tumor would have been compensation.

That "bargain" was never negotiated ahead of time with understanding for both parties. She went in with the expectation that her treatment would require _monetary_ compensation (as we all do). You can't change those terms afterwards.

>Not really considering she died the same year she was diagnosed.

What? You could just give the money to her estate.

>> No.5690808

>>5690426
>this stems from the idea that an individual has ownership over their body
They do.

>> No.5690862

>>5690808
Not when they are dead though. Case closed!

>> No.5690886

>>5690400
I was required to read this for advanced cell biology. As a matter of fact, I still have the book on my bookshelf right now.

Basically the individual in OP's image is a troll.

>> No.5690891

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1BxRbq2RL0

>> No.5691336

Will everyone stop spreading the fucking misconception that ANYONE profited "massivly" from the discovery of HeLa cells?

The dude who actually discovered them has not made a nickel from his discovery, the cells are basically sold at the exact cost it costs to grow and ship them, since there is no fucking patent or royalties going anywhere.

The only way for Biomed companies to profit from HeLa cells is to make positivly massive amounts of it, since the profit from any single sale is so low (generic products usually follow this pattern).

>> No.5691360

>>5690477
>Wouldn't you be disturbed to have somebody take a piece of you, make millions off of it, and give you nothing?
If I had cancer, and the doctors said "hey anon, this tumor of yours that we removed would be highly useful for medical research, can we use it as a case study?" I would answer "sure, have fun, I was not particularly fond of it anyway, and I wish you the best of luck making the world a better place". And if it then turned out that it's even more valuable than they thought, and a small cottage industry emerges in producing more of my tumor to supply to medical researchers everywhere, I would be quite (irrationally) proud of it, and it would never occur to me for an instant that I would be entitled to compensation for it.

>> No.5691378

>>5691360
it's very easy to spout this bullshit in imaginary situations like this. this is like playing a game where you hide a ball in one of your hands behind your back and ask me in which hand the ball is. if i say left, you swap the ball to your right hand without my knowledge.

>> No.5691381

>>5691378
That doesn't make it any less true.

>> No.5691382

>>5691381
so if you find oil in your backyard or win in the lottery and someone says "hey, why don't you give us all that oil/money because we are going to use it for the sake of SCIENCE and make the world a better place, profit from it and not give a penny to you?"

how about that?

>> No.5691392

>>5691382
No, because that's not the same thing AT ALL. Her cells were (and are) not a scarce resource -- it's something that can be multiplied cheaply, much like software (the fact that cultures of her cells are easily grown is a large part of what makes them so useful in the first place). Copies of software are no particularly valuable without systems of artificial scarcity like copyright, and the same holds for the He'Ma cells. And yes, I do give away the software I write as free software on a daily basis, thank you very much.
Moreover, it's not like anyone would have paid her a shitload of money for her cells in advance, which means they were not in fact particularly valuable in advance.

>> No.5691407

>>5691392
>not a scarce resource

if it wasn't a scarce resource at the time, why did the scientists flip their shit when they saw her cells? they had never seem anything like that before.
also cars, clocks, televisions and computers aren't made of scarce resources (besides oil and sometimes gold, but you get my point) yet they are still expensive. scarceness doesn't imply value.

>Copies of software are no particularly valuable without systems of artificial scarcity like copyright

so if there was a patent on her cells or some shit you'd instantly agree that it is worth something? if someone invents or discovers something it completly ok to steal it? he signs some papers and BOOM it's ethically (ETHNICALLY, not LEGALLY) acceptable for him to profit from the stuff he found out or invented and not have it stolen?

>> No.5691420

>>5691407
>if it wasn't a scarce resource at the time,
>also cars, clocks, televisions and computers aren't made of scarce resources
I meant "scarce" in the economic sense of the word. Look it up.
>so if there was a patent on her cells or some shit you'd instantly agree that it is worth something?
Of course. (Whether that's ethical or not is another matter.) And in that case, she would have been asked to hand over a patent instead (or donate it to science), which is a very different matter than what happened here. (I would personally still do that because I'm such a good guy, but here I'll grant you that "talk is cheap until it actually happens" applies.)
>if someone invents or discovers something it completly ok to steal it? he signs some papers and BOOM it's ethically (ETHNICALLY, not LEGALLY) acceptable for him to profit from the stuff he found out or invented and not have it stolen?
How exactly does that follow, and how is it even related?

>> No.5691774

>>5690463
People don't donate kill fetuses to donate them to science. They just don't want them, and figure science could use it for good.