I firmly believe the consent is necessary. The patient has authority to say yes or no to what the hospital can do with their specimen. They can be informed of what the benefits are when saying yes, and how they are contributing to the medical field with their donation, but if they do not want to be involved, they are entitled to say no. It’s a similar concept with organ donors; if the person dies at the hospital and never signed a consent to donate organs but never denied either, is the hospital the owner of those organs now? A person accepts to donate the organs when they are deceased but they have the option not to do so as well even knowing the benefits it could bring to another human. I think to educate the patients about the benefits of their contribution would be a manner of continuing medical research.

For Henrietta’s family, they should’ve received compensation, unfortunately, at the time the laws were not in their favor but their case was key to the medical laws today.