Henrietta Flacks Research Paper

Henrietta Lacks died never knowing the impact her life would have on the world of medicine. A poor, black woman living in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1950s, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died only nine short months after her diagnosis at the age of thirty-one. The mother of five children, Henrietta most likely died thinking her family would be her legacy. Little did she know her doctor at John Hopkins hospital, George Gey, had taken some of her cells before she died. With Henrietta’s cells, Dr. Gey was finally able to achieve a goal he had been working toward for decades – creating the first line of immortal cells (Freeman). These cells have been used for countless scientific research and have solidified Henrietta Lacks’ place

Rebecca Skloot’s, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” brings forth the story of a black woman, Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta was one of ten kids raised on a tobacco farm by her grandfather, Tommy Lacks, and married her half-brother David ‘Day’ Lacks. Before Henrietta died in 1951, doctors diagnosed her with cervical cancer and a malignant tumor at Johns Hopkins Hospital, the only hospital in the Baltimore area that accepted black patients. This story focused on how doctors at Johns Hopkins, particularly George Gey, the head of tissue-culture research at Johns Hopkins, took advantage of Henrietta. Before her death, doctors biopsied a portion of her cervical tumor and harvested the cancerous tissues. When researcher cultured these tissues, they discovered the cells had hearty, unusual qualities that allowed them to grow almost anywhere, with relative ease that was unheard of in the early stages of the field of cell production. Once researchers realized these qualities, people took steps to ensure her cells, called HeLa by researchers, could be purchased by anyone around the world. After her death, these cells were the backbone of many scientific discoveries around the world such as the vaccine for polio and the realization of HPV. However, Skloot questions whether or not these doctors ever had the right to take these cells from Henrietta without her permission, let alone sell them to researchers around the world. Rebecca Skloot analyzed the story of Henrietta’s HeLa cells,

As preposterous as it sounds some medical professions believed that Henrietta gave consent when she printed her name on the “OPERATION PERMIT” form which briefly stated:

When Henrietta Lacks found a lump in her cervix; she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland to sought for help. Doctor Howard Jones did a biopsy on the mass that was taken from Henrietta’s cervix, and he diagnosed her with stage one cervix cancer. Her cell culture and tumor was used for growing human cells outside of the body in Gey’s lab and the HeLa specimen is the one and only that work. This experiment has changed history forever and her cells was sent to labs around the world without Henrietta’s consent. It is unacceptable and unethical for them to use patients for research without their permission. The actions of George Gey’s and Johns Hopkins Hospital make us question their professional ethics which is also the reoccurring

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,

Oftentimes, medical doctors performed operations or viral injections without the patient’s knowledge or consent. In Henrietta’s case, her cells were inadvertently taken from her after her death and were commercially sold to researchers around the world, all without the knowledge of her family. Through the story of Henrietta Lacks and her fellow African Americans, Skloot questions the lack of ethical guidelines present in the 1950s and the lengths to which medical research can go to find answers.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was a very hard book to put down, for so many reasons, and really opened my eyes to the unethical ways of medicine back in the mid 1900s. In some ways a discovery like that was imperative for us to make so many important breakthroughs in medicine and I’m thankful for everything discovered because of it, but I am also appreciative of the regulations that have been made, potentially because of this story, that don’t allow you to just take someone else’s cells and DNA and use it how you please without the individual or family of gaining anything for the contribution.

Henrietta Lacks is woman, whose cells have been used for 63 years after her death in 1951, and will continue to be used as long as they are continue to grow. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who was born in the south, who married her cousin and moved up north. After giving birth to her last child, she finds that she has cancer. The doctors took a sample of her cancer cells without her permission, and now have millions of dollars but the family is still hasn’t received the money they are rightfully entitled to. Many of healthcare and entitlements that are around today, are due to the ill treatment of Henrietta and her family. Still to this day, there is very little known about Henrietta Lacks, even with the book out, and she has

The problem of poor education in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks plays an important role in two distinct ways. Firstly, the lack of education in Henrietta’s family gave rise to the notorious deception by the medical professionals at Johns Hopkins who interacted with the cells; namely, had Henrietta and/or her family been more knowledgeable, a more careful approach to her treatment could have been taken without the prospect of physicians taking advantage of them. This is unsettling, because what if Henrietta declined the extraction? What would have happened to medicine without her cells and the research following their replication? This is not to argue that she was not wrongly treated, but to pose a very important question involving the persistence of essential research: what accomplishments have been done without the patient knowing of their contribution? Ideally, after the unveiling of Henrietta’s story, the answer would be none. This pushes the level of complexity even further, because even though what happened was strictly ethical for the utilitarian, Gey undoubtedly deceived the family in doing so; one may want to dislike Gey, yet his actions led to a myriad of useful discoveries in the medical field. Secondly, the absence of a

Medical science has come a long way in the last 65 years. There have been many significant medical advances, including the development of the polio vaccine, the perfection of cell culturing techniques, the advent of medical commercialization, and progress towards understanding cancer and HIV. All of this -- and much, much more -- was made possible by one woman: Henrietta Lacks. She was an African American woman born in 1920, and by the time she died of cancer in 1951, she had made no direct contributions to the world of medicine. In fact, the thing that has since brought Henrietta’s name into the medical world was the very thing that ended up killing her. All of this was made possible by what doctors discovered inside of her tumor.

Henrietta Lacks: an unknown name up until recent years. A name that had been known to the world only as HeLa; The first two letters of a name that belonged to a poor African American tobacco farmer that unknowingly changed science and life as we know it today. Her life has finally been portrayed in a very intimate story that not only does her life some justice but also transcendentally brings to mind the philosophical issues concerning medical ethics both of the past, present, and the future. In a world of constantly evolving medical advancement, science is a pivotal force that propels ideas forward. Although most will agree that the knowledge and cures found are a positive aspect, there is also a necessary evil that is involved, including

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 Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks focuses on many issues that Henrietta and her family have faced over the years resulting from the discovery of HeLa cells. One such issue that was recurrently present was the ethical issue of informed consent, or the lack of it, in the Lacks’ case. In the beginning when Henrietta was first being treated with radium to kill her cancerous tumor, her primary doctor, Dr. TeLinde, took a sample of the tissue and sent it to Dr. Gey, head of tissue

The truth is the doctors that took Henrietta’s cells were doing it for a good cause. They didn’t do it to ruin her and her family’s life, they did it to help people and save lives. There were no laws prohibiting the taking of one’s cells, in fact in a later Supreme Court of California ruling, it was actually defended. When tissues are removed from your body, with or without consent, any claim to ownership