Joanna Belechak

Miss Burke

Honors English 11

April 20, 2017

The Ethical Nature of Drawing Blood

I believe that McKusick and Hsu took an ethical approach as to how they drew blood

from the Lacks children. Victor McKusick and Susan Hsu took blood from the Lacks children in

hopes of finding DNA markers that could help identify a HeLa cell in a lab. However, the Lacks

family was at first unaware, believing that they were giving blood samples to test if they had

cancer. This led to a debate between the Lacks family and doctors once again.

Hsu recalled to Skloot about giving Day a technical and medical explanation as to why

she wanted the samples, saying to him: We come to draw blood to get HLA antigen, we do

genetic marker profile because we can deduce a lot of Henrietta Lacks genotype from the

children and the husband (Skloot 182). Although they both had thick accents and Day only had

four years of education, Hsu was under the impression that Day understood what she told him.

The debate is whether Hsu informed him or simply perplexed him. I would argue that in

this case, even with out a formal written consent, the Lacks family was told and should have

been aware of what they were getting in to. On page 183 of The Immortal Life of Henrietta

Lacks, both McKusick and Hsu admitted to not giving informal consent or an approval form. The

research was not long-lasting, and the Lacks family had been notified and gave blood willingly.

The researchers were unaware that Day had not understood that phone call with Hsu, and Day

never asked for the informal explanation from her. Therefore, what they did was, in fact,

ethical.