Course Spotlight: Engineering Professional Development 155

The following student paper, shared with permission, was created in the Engineering Professional Development 155 class taught by George Johnson.

“In the chapter, Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable, it talks about a virologist named Dr. Chester Southam, and his use of the HeLa cells in testing for cancer. Southam was concerned that use of the HeLa cells could cause cancer. The book says, “…some rats grew tumors when injected…” And the scientists who used them were exposed to them at all times, “Researchers were in the air around the HeLa cells, touching them, even eating lunch at the tables beside them,” the book explains. So with this problem Southam started to inject people with the HeLa cells without there consent, and observe what happened. He injected patients who already had cancer at first, and then moved on to healthy humans. He found that the healthy humans rejected the cells much faster than subjects who already had cancer. With this fact, Southam “checked” people for cancer. The book says, “Southam thought that by timing the rejections rate, he might be able to find undiagnosed cases of cancer.” All of this testing came to an abrupt stop when three Jewish doctors refused to inject patients without the patients consent. They claimed that this was the same thing the Nazis did to their ancestors; they were following the Nuremberg Code. The Nuremberg Code states, the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. When they three doctors resigned because of this incident, it caused suspicion and an investigation was done on Southam. When it was all said and done Southam’s license was suspended for a year. In the afterword chapter the author, Rebecca Skloot, address the tissue sample issue. The tissue issue centers on doctors and scientists taking tissue samples from patients without their consent. The book says, “The samples come from routine medical procedures…They sit in freezers, shelves, and vats of liquid nitrogen.” Right now there is no law against taking tissue samples without consent, but some people are trying to change this. Scientists explain that if we do pass a bill to make them ask for tissues the research growth would drop drastically. In the end I am not sure which way this will end.
These parts of the book are very interesting to me. The chapter, Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable, surprised me. I didn’t realize that Dr. Southam did all of those experiments, like injecting them with cancer, on patients without them having any knowledge about it at all. I would have to side with the doctors who refused to do so. I feel if you are going to do test on a human, they should definitely know about it. The Nuremburg Code should have been enforced more strictly and Southam shouldn’t have just had his licenses suspended for a year. He should have had it taken away in my opinion. As far and the afterword part of the book, that was a real shocker. I had no idea that the medical community kept everyone’s tissues like that. The book explains, “…more than 307 million tissue samples from more than 178 million people are being stored in the United States.” This is madness. I never had any idea that there were this many tissue samples floating around behind the scenes of today’s medical community. I personally feel that I would like to know if the doctors took my tissue. What they test on it I don’t really care, but I would definitely like to know what they took.”

Donny Kuettel
Engineering Professional Development 155
George Roesch Johnson, Instructor