What is "benevolent deception" and it's implications on patients/subjects?
How was the scientific community able justifying unconsionable things done under "benevolent deception"?
Does medicine have the ethical obligation to work to establing laws regarding patient right?
Is the use of someone's cells for research and profit any different from the way an historian may profit from the letters of a Civil War soldier or an anthropologist from her conversation with an Amazonian hunter-gatherer?
What is informed consent? Does it fit into the story of Henrietta Lacks?
Do we own the right to control our body and it's cells, genes, data, etc? Does the law explicitly give us this right? If the law not not explicityly give us the power of control, who does have the power of control?
Does the power of control also carry the right to profit either materially or prefessionally from the use of other's cells? Did Henrietta or her heirs have the right to profit?
What is an author's "proper" role in writing a book? What is Skloot's role in this book?
As a visible player in the events of this book, did she overstep her bounds or did the particulars of this story essentially require her to become intimately involved with Henrietta's family and thus play a part in the story?
Physical Sciences
What is the goal of science and medicine in general? Is it to understand the universe around us? Is it for the good/advancement of humanities? Is it for fame and financial gain?
Over the past 60 years. how has scientific research changed? Are there differences between research practices in the bio-medical field and other areas of the sciences?
What are the economic factors and ramifications of bio-medical research?
Social Sciences
Consider race, gender, and poverty in the US in the late 1940s and 1950s. How are these played out in Henrietta's life and her surviving family members' lives?
In what ways did Henrietta's death set in motion events that affected her family for years and decades to come? Can we trace the progressing of those events and consider how they might have been different if Henrietta and her heirs had been compensated for the use of her cells?
What was the culture of medicine in the 1950s in regards to race, gender, and poverty? How did the professionals at Johns Hopkins approach their duties? What were their professional responsibilities as they saw them, vis-a-vis Henrietta, her treatment, and her cells?
How does race and poverty affect a patient's right to know and the way that right is violated in medical research and/or treatment? We could draw a parallel showing Henrietta Lacks case and the Tuskegee syphilis study mentioned in the book. Can a parallel be demonstrated using the research methods of that time period and the way medical researh is being conducted today?