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| Henrietta Lacks, "mother" of HeLa. |
Thanks to Iberia (and their delays) just finished the book Rebecca Skloot on HeLa cells and the woman who was its origin: Henrietta Lacks. I must admit I not only liked but I highly recommend it as a perfect blend human and scientific literature, if you understand what I mean. Unfortunately, I do not think the sale is still a translation, but here you have a small comment about the book in English .
However, with everything that is interesting and the various controversial issues that touch on that I think is most interesting at this point in the letter genomes and data protection policies that are laughter, and where capitalism comes to levels where it is possible to patent and hamper the public benefit of knowledge or the identification of genes (as I wrote in earlier , it seems that this situation could end if the American Court of Justice maintains the verdict against the BRCA gene patent) is the membership of tissues and / or biological samples that "we" in the hospital after treatment (see biopsy), giving birth, or even after a simple blood test.
The case exposes the book, a patient whom to undergo treatment for cervical cancer were extracted samples without their consent, samples that subsequently led to the HeLa cell culture line appears a strange case, which at the time of informed consent has no reason to be (If dates from the decade of the 50 in an American hospital for patients of color) but apparently there are precedents in the United States in the Court of Justice which gave the right to researchers without the consent / knowledge of the patient tissues used extracted from them for marketing. The reason given is that once you were no longer owned and biological material since it is discarded (by biopsy, tumors ...) can not be held accountable to the hospitals by their use of them as well if given the right the patient that inhibit the progress of science, say (for details, if Moore).
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| Would you give your heart to science? |
In Europe the situation is somewhat different as reflected in the report European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods in 1998 (although the group's name sounds pretty strange and induces chills pseudo) at least in this report only focus on discussing the benefits that would enhance humados tissue donation in order to limit the research in animal models. This report presents the reasons why in Europe, in sharp contrast with the U.S. most tissues transplantable not lost, mainly due to the ethical and legal implications for physicians may have to transfer these tissues for research in the absence of clear legislation (hence, the majority of human tissue for research is imported from the U.S.). However, in recent years are putting initiatives in Europe to organize the availability and tissue distribution of human experimentation for example in Britain or Switzerland. Although the great difference between Europe and the United States about the donation of human tissue for experimentation is that in old Europe possible must be an active donation and informed consent. In Europe it would be illegal tissues removed from patients were used for profit and make someone rich at the expense of selling the tumor cells taken from a patient.
On the other side of the fight to raise awareness for the donation of transplantable organs have learned that it is difficult to combat social prejudices about what organ donation means and cases like that of Henrietta Lacks, even distant in time and distance, do a disservice to progress in the awareness of the importance to the advancement of science and the benefit to everyone who has the gift for show that capitalism reaches even the cellular level. Fortunately there are significant efforts to raise awareness as proposed by the association BrainNet Europe explaining how and why the donation, in this case, your brain, Science. We Need BRRRRRAIIIINSSS!
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