The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, begins by sharing Henrietta Lack’s journey of becoming the dehumanized HeLa cell. Henrietta was a poor, black woman who grew up in the era of institutionalized racism, which created no way for her to become educated and therefore, unable to further herself or her family. Skloot shows how Henrietta’s race dictated her life by leaving her with no choice in hospital, no chance in understanding her treatment, and no identity to her own ‘immortal’ cells. When Henrietta needed treatment for the ‘knot on her womb,’ the only hospital that would treat her was nearly twenty miles away. To show the brutality of all-white hospitals, Skloot states, “. . . When black people showed up at white-only …show more content…
When Henrietta was this far away from home and in a new environment, it frightened her into staying quiet and therefore, not understanding what her treatment was. Although the doctors weren’t treating her differently than other patients because of her race, she almost needed to be advised differently because she didn’t understand what was happening to her body. Skloot states, “For Henrietta, walking into Hopkins was like entering a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language…she’d never heard the words cervix or biopsy.” (pg 16) By feeling uncomfortable and unwelcomed in the hospital environment, it created a toxic cycle of African Americans stating that they are fine when something is seriously wrong with their health and are in need professional care. This fear seems to be rooted in the oppression that white doctors set on black patients because these doctors are seen to be of a higher class at the time. Proving truth behind Henrietta's fear was the unethical mindset of Richard Wesley TeLinde, who used poor patients’ tissue without telling them, believing that this was their payment of their free service. Researchers and doctors with similar mindsets to TeLinde’s is what created the power institutional racism which lead African American, like Henrietta, to have no
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a historical fiction book by Rebecca Skloot, a scientific writer.
Skloot’s “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” documents of the story of Henrietta Lacks. The novel shares the story of how scientists collected cells from Lacks and created a human cell line that has continued to multiple indefinitely. Moreover, the cells of Henrietta Lack has enables discoveries and further research which has contributed to the fields of cancer research and gene mapping. The novel addresses the scientific story and exposes of the unethical practice of medical testing on African Americans; furthermore, Skloot bring the world of science, politics, and social justice to one common accord. A poor African American field worker, Henrietta Lacks died from cancer in 1951.
Henrietta Lacks discovered a knot in her womb one day and went to the Hopkins Hospital, in the gynecology clinic for "colored" people. Henrietta had been telling her friends for more than a year that something was hurting and it
In the second section, Skloot tells the story of Henrietta’s death with quotes from multiple perspectives in order to establish her as a human, rather than just the origin of the HeLa cells. Chapters with historical context tell the story of cancer research when it first began to emerge, and begins to connect those events to Henrietta Lacks. In this section, the author’s research and interviews with the Lacks family are introduced much more often to start the transition from the topic of Henrietta’s life to the bigger picture, her importance to medical/scientific ethics. The final, and longest chapter concludes the book with the many legacies Henrietta left behind, not only for research, but also her family and humanitarian issues with ethics and
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book written by Rebecca Skloot in 2010 that tells the story of Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line known as HeLa found in her cervical cancer cells in 1951. Rebecca Skloot first heard about Henrietta Lacks in a college biology classroom back when she was a teenager. Henrietta Lacks was a 31 years old black tobacco farmer who died of cancer, and without her or her family’s knowledge, a sample of the HeLa cell was taken from her and was used in medical researches. The HeLa cells were the first human cells to survive and multiply, and since it was taken has been used in scientific research all over the world, and have played a huge role in medical
The treatment of African Americans in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks demonstrates the lack of ethics in the United States health care system during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the impression that medical doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital were solely injecting radium treatment for cervical cancer, Henrietta Lacks laid on the surgical bed. During this procedure Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr. shaved two pieces of tissue from her vagina, one from a healthy cervical tissue and one from the cancerous tumor, without Henrietta’s prior knowledge. After recovering from her surgery Henrietta exited the door marked, “Blacks Only,” the door that signified the separation between White and African-American patients. Had Henrietta been White, would the
The time period Henrietta Lacks lived in wasn’t the ideal conditions for black people. Even though slavery was over and everyone was considered equal, black people were still separated from whites in this this time period. Henrietta grew up in a poor black community that didn’t really have black medical centers nearby, babies were born in the houses and not many of them ever went to a doctor. Later on in chapter one Henrietta finds a lump insider her vagina and she was bleeding when it wasn’t her time of the month. John Hopkins hospital was twenty miles away from her house, but it was the only hospital that would accept black families like the Lacks. I did not like how some hospitals would reject sick black people even though it meant some
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, is a national bestseller and is considered one of the most engaging pieces of nonfiction literature of all time. Through her own perspective, Skloot offers the reader insight on the life of Henrietta Lacks, both prior and during her battle against cervical cancer. In doing so, Skloot captures the corruption of the medical professionals in the 1950s and contributes details of her personal account with the Lacks family. Overall, Skloot retells the story of Henrietta Lacks, while incorporating central aspects such as violation of ethics, discrimination against minorities, corruption of medical professionals, and scientific advancements that have
Grey and his actions. Zakariyya holds onto to these damaging emotions which causes him to act out in rage and violence. Deborah and Zakariyya have very different ways of reacting and handling their emotions, however all the emotions they are feeling are valid in their obscure and painful situation. Henrietta’s life is the prime example of the level of racism in the healthcare system in the 1950s. The struggles that blacks faced during this time period were only made worse by the poor treatments from the doctors or even the complete disregard for their black patients. According to Skloot the issues relating to blacks seeking medical care could include being hospitalized later in stages of their sickness, fewer pain medications, and higher mortality rates. These facts that came from the racist healthcare system greatly influenced Henrietta’s life, by causing her more pain since the doctors kept sending her away without the appropriate treatment. This surely wouldn’t have happened if Henrietta was a middle class white woman. No one can know for sure, but perhaps giving Henrietta the proper care and treatment from the beginning would not only ease her suffering, but also her
Henrietta Lacks, a resilient African American women, had to face a life of disappointing medical treatment because she was perpetuated by society as someone who is not worth saving or treating properly. This was due to the social status of blacks who were segregated and subjected for their skin color in the early-mid 1900's. The story starts off mysterious and provided the reader with a picture frame of what the situation is because in the start there was something uncanny about the cancer cells on Henrietta Lacks’s cervix. The HeLa cells reproduced boisterously in a lab at Johns Hopkins the first human cells ever to do so. HeLa became an instant biological celebrity, traveling to research labs all over the world.
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,
Her husband takes her to John Hopkins hospital in East Baltimore. This hospital was much farther away than the ones closer to her home, but this was the only hospital that offered treatment to black patients. The doctor who was on duty is Howard Jones, who listens to Henrietta’s problems as well as take note that she has a long list of untreated medical conditions.
While today’s “patients [have] one thing going for them that Henrietta didn't: They [are] alive. And the dead have no right to privacy-even if part of them is still alive,” (Skloot 211) history’s ethical debate regarding medical racism remains a social issue. When patients experience racism, they may be unable to defend themselves if they are incapacitated by medical professionals. Due to patient negligence and bias, the health care provider’s poor treatment breaks the trust of minorities. As shown in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and treatment of Henrietta Lacks, doctors and researchers have failed to inform the participants correctly. Both occurrences highlight medical racism because of the historical maltreatment of minority groups. Now, many
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
They saw what happened when their mother/wife went to Hopkins, to them she went in normal and seemingly healthy, then slowly withered away to death. Henrietta’s family had a variety of illnesses, her husband had prostate cancer, one son needed an angioplasty, her daughter had arthritis and osteoporosis, and they all had diabetes and high blood pressure, but they avoided Hopkins at all costs. Henrietta’s daughter-in-law “wouldn’t even go to [Hopkins] to get her toenails cut” (Skloot 2011, 165). African-American oral history tells stories of night doctors who would creep around at night infecting black people with disease or kidnapping them for research. They also heard stories of money being offered in exchange for black bodies that could be used for research. The Lackses whole-heartedly believed these stories, and after seeing what happened to Henrietta in the short span of time after her first visit to Hopkins it only further emphasized their beliefs. The idea of cultural difference between the doctors and African Americans regarding bioethical procedures is seen here. In the time setting that the oral stories took place, it was seen as ethical for scientist to use black people for any research because they were seen as lesser of people.