The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Essay

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.

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

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 by Rebecca Skloot. She has composed this biography of Henrietta Lacks to inform her readers about the hard reality that the Lacks family went through. In order to grasp a better understanding about this novel we will first uncover some details about Henrietta and her cells. Next, we will discuss how she came from a large family and that they were originally from Virginia. Finally, we will examine what she did after she moved to Baltimore and what happened after the move throughout the first two chapters.

Henrietta Lacks, a woman whose cells have made millions of dollars, but most people don’t know her name, or her story. “She’s usually identified as Helen Lane, but often she has no name at all. She’s simply called HeLa, the code name given to the world’s first immortal human cells – her cells cut from her cervix just months before she died. Her real name is Henrietta Lacks,” (Skloot 1). Through the last few months of her life, she had major struggles with hospitals and scientists. Henrietta was in serious pain throughout the last few months, and the doctor treated her as a specimen. “Henrietta is still a miserable specimen,” (Skloot 66). Another major flaw in Henrietta story is the fact that her family was barely told of her condition of cervical

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?

“The scientific enterprise is all about failure; I mean, you learn so much from failure. And you learn almost nothing from success.” This scientist is stating that one cannot gain any knowledge without failing. This is not true. Once one obtains success one now knows exactly what to do to achieve success, thus opening doors and further experiences for them. The novel “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, due to the success of tissue culture researcher Dr. George Gey can further dispute this quote. His success in tissue culture led to further discoveries, and became one of the most important breakthroughs in modern medicine. The world was

Racism is immortal just like Henrietta’s cells it will always be around. People would do anything to be the first to discover something. At the end of the day it’s all about the money. The Mississippi appendectomies and the Tuskegee experiments were similar in the way that the government forced treatment upon minorities without consent. Henrietta’s case was different than Mississippi and Tuskegee because the doctor in Johns Hopkins didn’t experiment on her actual body but on her cells without consent. Henrietta’s case the Tuskegee experiments and the Mississippi Appendectomies are all different cases in different locations but serve the same purpose which is to take advantage of poor and uneducated minorities to

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,

Ethics, in our society, are the moral principles that govern our behavior, dictating what is right from wrong. The specifics of ethics changes as values in our society change and evolve. This occurs in Rebecca Skloots book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. One major reoccurring theme in the book is the lack of informed consent and autonomy. Fortunately, now there are safeguards which protect human rights in regard to health care and research. The Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, now part of the Department of Health and Human Services, created The Belmont Report, which is one such safeguard establishing principles for all human research (USDHHS, 1979). This paper will discuss the ethical issue of informed consent within The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the disregard to parts of the Belmont Report, as well as compare the role of the nurse in charge of Henrietta’s care versus the standards of care set for modern nurses.

As seen in Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Deborah Lacks is telling her brothers that when they go back into history, that they should not approach it “with a hate attitude.” (Skloot), but with an unbiased mind for the opinions of then differed from current ones. Deborah’s brothers are being realistic while Deborah herself is being too idealistic in regards to how she and her brothers view the past. I do not think it is possible to approach history from an objective point of view because all the events that are occurring today in 2016, makes it seem that we have not progressed from the ideas of the 1950s whatsoever.

Somehow, Bobbette finds out that Henrietta’s cells are still alive from her friends brother in law who worked at the National Cancer Institute. Bobbette makes it a priority to tell Lawrence. Lawrence calls John Hopkins to ask about Henrietta’s cells and discovers that they have not only been alive for twenty years, but they are bought and sold. Deborah starts getting nervous that she too will die at the same time her mother, Henrietta, died and from the same cancer. “What made her mother sick? How was part of her still living? What did it mean? What did Henrietta do for science? And did all those blood tests he was doing mean Deborah was going to die young like her mother?” (187). This discovery of Henrietta’s cells take a passive toll on

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.

The theme I have selected for my book is “...Despite one’s best effort, humanity will not always return the favor. Life is not a balanced scale; life is a dance of give and take that can leave one person on top of the world and another buried six feet under.” This theme can be linked to my poster’s slogan: “It is possible to be chained by the stories we have yet to tell,” because the chains that bound the Lacks family were the cause of the unjustness they were subjected to. The image I selected represents my slogan and the characters in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks because they felt locked up, left to rot as they wondered what had happened to their mother. The chains are the lies, the secrets, and the manipulations that the Lacks family

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