The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Essay

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.

The story “Henrietta's Dance”, by Rebecca Skloot, is about the true story of Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were immorally used to make multiple medical breakthroughs without any compensation being rewarded to her family. The story “Immortal Cells, Moral Issues” by Dale Keiger is about the same story of Henrietta Lacks, but Keiger focuses more on the legality of her story and tries to prove the deception through law rather than the medical and scientific aspect of it. Although science writers Rebecca Skloot and Dale Keiger both relay that the humanity of a patient should be an important part of medical research, Skloot’s narrative is more effective. She used language and tone in order to reveal that the issues surrounding bioethics is a story

Also, while the doctors were making money off of Henrietta’s cells the family was struggling to get by and received no compensation. The Lacks’ family are African-American, in which, during the 1950s racism and segregation were still dreadfully thriving. Since the Lacks’ family were of a different color it was very difficult for them to be checked out by any kind of doctor. One ethical issue throughout the book is the proper supply of giving consent. Skloot wrote in her book, “no one told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting samples or asked if she wanted to be a donor” (33). Henrietta had no knowledge that the doctors were going to take cells from her tumor and cells from her healthy cervical tissue to try and grow them for medical research. If Henrietta knew what her cells could have done medically then she most likely would have allowed them to take her cells and done research. However, taking someone’s cells or doing something to someone’s body without them knowing will in no way be

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot is a book that documents the author’s firsthand conversations and experiences with the Lacks family about their deceased relative, Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta had a unique type of cervical cancer, and before she passed away, doctors removed some of her cells without telling her. Those cells were later named HeLa and used to advance scientific research. HeLa also created a source of profit both directly and indirectly for scientists and mass producers of the cell line. In this book, the author aims to educate its readers on medical and scientific ethics, to argue against a researcher, scientist, or doctor’s ability to extract tissues from a person without consent.

I chose to address one major issue that I faced will reading Skloots’ book, which was the absence of a consent form. A consent form is used to protect and ensure a patient from any harm but also to provide valuable information on procedures. This is something that Henrietta Lacks never acquired. Nowadays it seems that everything requires some sort of consent form. People can disagree and say that even her doctors were unsure of Henrietta illness but what little they did know should have been shared with Henrietta or even the Lacks family.

This is a book that tells a story of an African-American woman and the Scientific journey of her cells, it also goes in depth about how her daughter came to find out about her immortal cells. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is divided into three layers and each part discusses different event that happened during the course of Henrietta’s life, death, and immortality. If the story was written in a chronological order would it had made it easier or harder to understand the more important things?

How would you feel if something was taken away from you without your knowledge? You would been extremely mad, once you found out about it, right? Well that’s exactly what happened to a woman named Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks had cervical cancer and a doctor by the name of George Gey, took two samples of Henrietta’s cervix (without telling Henrietta or her family) one from the good part that did not have cancer and one from the cancer side. Doctor Gey put the two samples in tubes and named them “HeLa”. A young woman named Rebecca Skloot found out about the immortality that Henrietta and her family faced though the process of her cancer, when Rebecca was only sixteen. Rebecca researched Henrietta, her family, and “HeLa” cells for about ten

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,

Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia. Lacks died of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951, at age 31. Cells taken from her body without her knowledge were used to form the HeLa cell line. Lacks's case has sparked legal and ethical debates over the rights of an individual to his or her genetic material and tissue.

In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot pictures the life of both Henrietta and her family. Skloot first starts with illustrating the early and adolescent life of Henrietta, and also ending it with Henrietta’s fight with cervical cancer. Skloot covers heavily on the ethics of researchers or scientists taking cells of Henrietta without her consent. The medical field becomes more involved with the creation of the HeLa cell line and starts getting out of control. Therefore, causing problems between the Lacks family and the hospitals.

Henrietta’s cells being taken were not the first time that colored people were being taken advantage of in hospitals. There were many more blacks that were tested on and used as experiments for researchers because there lives were not seen to be valuable. African Americans also happened to be less educated, so whatever the doctors told to them they automatically listened to. Not only because they did not understand what they were saying to them and so they believed doctors knew best, but because they themselves did not know any better.

Elie Wiesel once stated: “We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” This means that every aspect of a person is important because they all have a story to tell which is unique. They all are much more than the stories told about them. Everyone has faced challenges in their life whether it be emotionally or physically, but have also have had achievements. In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, both the scientific community and the media are guilty of having viewed Henrietta and her family as abstractions. She was an African American women from whom a scientists took cancerous cells found in the tumor located in her cervix. The cells were named HeLa and were grown to an inconceivable number and became

This research paper is based on the findings from the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. What you will read and come to know is nonfiction. I wish I could put the pictures of what I have seen and read together here for you to perhaps get a better understanding. A story based on not Henrietta’s life being that of immortality, but rather cancer cells removed from her body without her knowledge. These were the first cancer cells to reproduce outside of her body. You will come to know about Henrietta, her cancer, her cells, and her immortal life. Perhaps we can all learn to appreciate life in greater means of appreciation after reading and knowing the life and immortal afterlife of Henrietta Lacks. You will learn about a woman, who like us, had a family, and ended up not being able to truly live life to its fullest. Making us all realize just how cancer is and the amazing research that came from being able to reproduce her cells. Not just for cancer but for various other illnesses that plague so many of us. My hope is that you take away from this a better understanding of a time we do not know, for the ups and downs of science and the possibility of immortal life.

Henrietta Lacks is not a common household name, yet in the scientific and medical world it has become one of the most important and talked names of the century. Up until the time that this book was written, very few people knew of Henrietta Lacks and how her cells contributed to modern science, but Rebecca Skloot aimed to change this. Eventually Skloot was able to reach Henrietta’s remaining family and through them she was able to tell the story of not only the importance of the HeLa cells but also Henrietta’s life.

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