Do the Ends Ever Justify the Means?

Her family did not support this research and immediately tried to stop the use of Henrietta’s cells. Henrietta’s family with the help of author Rebecca Skloot and other non-supporters of scientists using Henrietta’s cells for research, they were able to get Henrietta’s cells out of the public database, but the significance of Henrietta will last forever. In August twenty-thirteen Henrietta finally got some government recognition when the National Institutes of Health agreed with the Lacks family to acknowledge her in scientific

Henrietta's family did not know anything about what HeLa cells were except it was making George Gey which was Henrietta's doctor who worked at Hopkins Hospital very wealthy. This made the Lacks' family very upset since they did not know about the profit that was being made off of Henrietta's cells.

Back in the mid-1900s, many doctors did not feel the need to inform their patients of their treatment and what it included for the patient’s own well-being, including Henrietta Lacks’ doctor, which is wrong. Doctors would help

When Rebecca Skloot first finds out about Henrietta Lacks by her college professor, she is captivated by Lacks and wants to know more about her. The book portrays Skloot’s adventures as she researches and unfolds new truths behind the HeLa story. Lacks’ story associates a personal family story with various debates over poverty, racism, scientific research, and moral ethics. Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who died in 1951 at the age of 31 due to numerous tumors infested in her body. Before she died, a sample of her tumor was taken without her consent and was later used for medical research.

After Skloot gets to know the Lacks family, she becomes more biased in the way she writes her book. She talks about the hardships of the family as they grew up without compensation, despite that scientists are making millions with Henrietta’s

They thought the doctors were still trying to fix her,” (Skloot 65). Henrietta’s family is still being treated poorly today, being lied to and never got a profit from the cells. “’She’s the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?’”(Skloot 168). In fact, Henrietta herself is one of the major reasons the debate on whether it should be legal to cell organs and cells is a debate today. “HeLa cells as the springboard to launch the first industrial-scale for-profit cell distribution center,” (Skloot 101). Although there are several arguments in the debate over selling body parts, three key arguments deal with the topics of money, helping others, and personal choice. Considering all of the topics, the selling of body parts for profit should be

In between the facts and reports, Rebecca Skloot let us have a glimpse into Henrietta life. She is an African-American woman living with her husband and five children in Baltimore, Maryland. The Lack’s family is financially unstable since Henrietta have to sought help from a charity hospital. The family background brought up to another main point which is race and social class. People come to John Hopkins Hospital to seek for free medication and treatment therefore they are treated differently, “Like many doctors of his era, TeLinde often used patients from the public wards for research, usually without their knowledge. Many scientists believed that since patients were treated for free in the public wards, it was fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment” (Skloot, 2010). It is also no surprise that the hospital and doctors treated Henrietta different because she is the black women. Back in 1951 segregation between black and white was still an ongoing problem. This tragic story would never happen if Henrietta was a middle class, white woman. They would have asked for her consent before using her cells for research. There is also studies that shows black patients receive different treatment and medication compared to white

After her death in 1951, for six decades, Henrietta Lacks did not exist in the eyes of the society, but her cells did. How? Well, the answer is quite simple. HeLa Cells are the first immortal human cells. These cells never die and multiply every twenty-four hours. After spending 10 years to perfect her first book, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot essentially captured the life, the death, and aftermath of Henrietta Lacks’ life. With controversial issues regarding science, ethics, race, and class Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey. From the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells, from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover,

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, was a nonfiction story about the life of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Henrietta did not know that her doctor took a sample of her cancer cells a few months before she died. “Henrietta cells that called HeLa were the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory” (Skloot 22). In fact, the cells from her cervix are the most important advances in medical research. Rebecca was interested to write this story because she was anxious with the story of HeLa cells. When she was in biology class, her professor named Donald Defler gave a lecture about cells. Defler tells the story about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells. However, the professor ended his

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is based on the story of Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman who died of cervical cancer. It was during the time when race was still a big factor in the United States and the principle of medical ethical was in its early stages. One of the main themes of this book surrounded around the ethical issue of informed consent. During an operation to remove the cancerous tumor from Henrietta Lacks, Dr. George Gey took a sample of cancerous tissue from cervix without her consent. Also, her family was not informed of the sample that was taken out from Henrietta and it was years before they found out about the fate of their mother’s cells. The cell that was extracted from Henrietta, known as

“The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks” written by Rebecca Skloot exposes the truth about a colored woman, Henrietta Lacks, who died from cancer leaving five children and a husband behind. Before her death doctors took her cells,without her or her family consent, to do there own research and experiments. They discovered that her cells were immortal, they became the first immortal cells known as the HeLa cells..After the discoverment the Lacks family were never told that Henrietta Lacks cells were used, bought and sold. Through the HeLa cells the scientist had made money while Henrietta kids were mistreated and were in poor situations.It wasnt till 25 years later that the Lacks family found out about the HeLa cells doing miracles. Rebecca Skloot though “The immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” was able to explain the unethical situations that the Lacks family faced after Henrietta’s death.

The cells were kept alive long enough to allow the researchers to go in depth with studies and examinations. The ethical issue was, like stated before, that the Lacks family did not give physicians permission to take samples of her cells. But during that time permission was not required and that is why they were able to take the samples. In the court case of California v. Regents of UC in 1990 it was ruled that a person’s discarded tissue was not their property and could be used. The ethical concerns are still around today because recently researchers published their results and this affected the family. Things like lack of respect for the Lacks, just and even race and social class come into the conversation because of the use of her tissue without her consent.

The non-fiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, details the happenings and life of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman and tobacco farmer who became a medical miracle in the 1950’s. The book is written in an attempt to chronicle both the experiences and tribulations of Henrietta Lacks and her family, as well as the events that led to, and resulted from, research done on Henrietta Lacks’ cells. Henrietta was a very average African American woman in this period; she had only a seventh-grade level education, and followed traditional racial and gender roles by spending her time has a mother and caretaker, as well as working on farms throughout her life until the involvement of the US in World War II brought her and her husband, “Day” Lacks, comparatively better work opportunities in industrial steel mills. However, after her death in 1951 Henrietta became much more than average to doctors at John Hopkins when the discovered that cells extracted from her cancerous tissue continued to live and grow much longer than any other tissue samples. Further investigation and isolation of these thriving cells led to the creation of the first ever immortal human cell line in medical history. The incredible progress in medicine made possible by Henrietta Lack’s tissue cells were not without downfalls, though. The treatments and experiences received by Henrietta and the effects it had on her and her family demonstrate both racial and gender

Although she was taken from the world too soon, Henrietta Lacks was a warm hearted woman, and though unbeknownst to her, she would pave the way for the medical field and greatly expand our understanding of one of the nation’s

The effect the discovery and creation of the HeLa cells made on the science community and Henrietta’s family had a domino effect. Both had different opinions and beliefs on the matter; this led to some difficult questions asked of the family and of the medical community. Due to the new and advanced methods of experimentation, the HeLa cells made to to the field of science, the scientific community and the media failed to remember that Henrietta and her family were not abstractions but actual people. Rebecca Skloot, however, took into account the Lack’s family, she inquired both the history of the HeLa cells as well as the Lacks family, treating them as actual people with inalienable rights.