Part 1: HeLa

When Doctors first took Henrietta's cells it was obviously an unjust action to begin with. Henrietta gave consent to the hospital to "perform any operative procedures and under any anaesthetic either local or general that they may deem necessary in the proper surgical care and treatment" Removing Henrietta's cells might have happened during the operation in order to further cancer research, but they were removed for TESTING and were used in general research, not research to benefit/heal Henrietta herself. To add fuel to the fire, after getting positive results in the testing Gey didn't trace the cells back and ask for Henrietta's consent to use them in order to further the research. Also, I believe that this was not done on a basis of race, many people knew that the cells were called "HeLa" but not many knew that they came from a black woman. If more white people knew that black cells were being inserted into their body there would be a definite uproar. In fact, that wouldn't have happened in the first place because the hospital was careful to label blood samples as "black". Similar to the Tuskegee incident, Gey and his fellow researchers didn't keep organized materials. Sure, their equipment was clean and they were careful about contamination and experimenting correctly, but the fact that they didn't inform any of the patients of the cell collecting and never contacted Henrietta seems fishy. In the book there's a quote by one of Gey's colleagues, "I'll never forget it," Aurelian said. "George told me he leaned over Henrietta's bed and said, 'Your cells will make you immortal.' He told Henrietta her cells would help save the lives of countless people, and she smiled. She told him she was glad her pain would come to some good for someone." Gey openly admitted to his colleague that he found Henrietta and informed her about her cells, so why didn't he acknowledge that and give her public credit for saving "the lives of countless people"? Perhaps to keep the money to himself and to keep the malpractice of the lack of consent a secret.