The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Summary

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a novel written by Rabecca Skloot that outlines the life and story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks and her families struggle to discover the truth. Henrietta Lacks was and African American women who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of thirty. A doctor at John Hopkins Hospital examined Henrietta and a biopsy of the cancerous tissue was retrieved. Henrietta received treatment for her cancer, but the cancer was too aggressive and she soon passed away at age of thirty-one, but her cells continue to live today. Henrietta Lack’s cells were unlike any other humans cells ever examined. The cells were able to grow, multiply, and divide outside of the human body in a lab (Skloot 2010). This was a major scientific discovery. Henrietta’s cells, more commonly known to the public as HeLa, aided in the creation of several scientific discoveries and are still used today. It is because of HeLa we have the polio vaccine, a better understanding of cancer, and cells in general. The cells have even been sent into space and have been exposed to nuclear testing and to toxins (BigPicture). Although Henrietta Lacks’s cells have done a lot good, many ethical issues surround her case such as privacy issues, monetary compensation, exploitation, and cell contamination to name a few. Perhaps the most important and controversial ethical issue in Hennrietta’s case resides around consent, or the lack there of.

This book kept me drawing conclusions and I could think of the good and bad too most of it. “But Henrietta’s cells weren’t early surveying, they were growing with mythological intensity…Soon, George told a few of his closest colleagues that he thought his ab might have grown the first immortal human cells. To which they replied, Can I have some? And George said yes” (40.5). Skloot gives an insight to the secret ‘deal’ between the doctors to emphasize her point, once again, that taking cells were okay at the time without consent from the patient. The audience sees and irony here as they read about Gey’s answer to his colleagues question, can I have some, as a yes. Even though Gey doesn’t own the cells, he is giving other people Henrietta’s cells as if it is his. Henrietta, herself, is not asked the question, before Gey took away her cells without asking her. “Not lont after Henrietta’s death, planning began for a HeLa factory- a massive operation that would grow to produce trillions of HeLa cells each week. It was built for one reason: to help stop polio”(93.1). This setting shows the inhumanity that had went on in the 1900’s. Henrietta’s death was considered to be nothing at all. Henrietta’s cells were the only ones that were welcomed and meaningful, who and where that they came from didn’t matter, HeLa cells were widely spread and praised for its immortality, but Henrietta was not. She probably lived through

First, the waver that Henrietta signed at John Hopkins gave permission for her doctors to (according to Skloot) (2010) “perform any operative procedures…that they deem necessary in the proper surgical care and treatment of _________________,” (pg. 31). Henrietta’s cells were taken, but not for treating her cancer. Second, because of her race and economic status, Henrietta was an easy target. . In 1951, at John Hopkins, when Henrietta received treatment at a colored operating room. Because of this segregation, The treatment was not as well and the doctors had the ability do take advantage of her but Henrietta did not have much of a choice. In the operating room, Richard TeLinde did not ask her permission to take her tissues, Even if he had, Henrietta would not have been able to say no. Skloot (2010) describes this as a time of “benevolent deception” (pg. 63), where the doctors hid information from the patients at the hospital and patients didn’t question doctors, especially when the doctors were white and the patients were black. This is what made Henrietta such a target at John Hopkins. Additionally, no one thought to tell Henrietta afterwards what George Gey had discovered about her special

Her family would later find out Henrietta was misdiagnosed. Henrietta went to John Hopkins for treatment due to it being the only hospital in her area who would treat African Americans. Many doctors during this time would use the public for research without the patient’s consent, and this happened to Henrietta. Without Henrietta’s permissions, a doctor treating Henrietta’s tumor proceeded to take tissue from her cancer tumors and her healthy cervical tissue. Her tissue ended up in Gey’s lab which were named HeLa. Two days later Henrietta’s cells began growing, and soon after Gey began giving samples of HeLa to his closest colleagues (Skloot 41). Henrietta never knew of her cells growing in the lab. Unfortunately, Henrietta’s cancer began to spread throughout her body. Treatment was not working for Henrietta, and she passed away October 4th, 1951 (Skloot 86). No one knew who Henrietta was for a long time, and she lost a lot of time of receiving credit for her cells. Henrietta’s cells ended up being sold for a profit by a manufacturer. Her family did not receive anything from Henrietta’s cells being used. Henrietta’s cells helped changed the medical world. Her cells were used for creating a polio vaccine and IVF. They also helped understand HPV, HIV, and AIDs. Henrietta’s cells have done a lot for cancer research. However, Henrietta’s family suffered deeply after her death, and

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

In the early 1970s, researchers called the Lacks family requesting blood samples from Henrietta’s family so as to determine which cells were HeLa cells as they had begun contaminating other cell cultures in labs. One has to wonder if the need to identify HeLa cells from other cells hadn’t arisen, than perhaps the Lacks family would have never been told of impact of their mother’s cells. As it is, the researchers who contacted the Lacks family didn’t make much effort to explain the situation to Day Lacks, Henrietta’s husband, or her children. Mr. Lacks had only a third grade education, so he didn’t know

In addition, the scientist began carrying out research on the Lack’s children and they were not aware of the purpose of the research. During this time, HeLa cells were the most studied by researchers and scientist. Vaccines grown from her cells were used by doctors to inject both cancerous patients as well as healthy patients with the intention of testing them. Injecting healthy patients without certainty that the patient will not develop cancer is unethical and also many of these studies were done without patient’s knowledge. For instance, when Skloot describes Southam, a virologist who conducted studies on patient and lied to them about the study. He told his patients that he was testing their immune system without revealing anything regarding injecting the patients with cancerous cells. During that period, prisoners countrywide were employed for all types of studies and this included the HeLa’s cell study. In some studies, left them infected with deadly disease. The inability by the inmates to make informed consent makes that study on prisoners unethical and should be

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, was written about an African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, who had cervical cancer and then had her cells taken from her without consent. The author, Rebecca Skloot, thoroughly explained how the cells being taken, and Henrietta’s death, affected the lives of the Lacks’ family, along with why it affected them the way that it did. Henrietta was married to David “Day” Lacks and they had five children: Lawrence, Sonny, Zakariyya, Elsie, and Deborah. Rebecca Skloot had the most contact with Deborah, who wanted to know all about her mother and her sister, Elsie. In my opinion, the most significant part of the book was the unethical medical research that played a part in Henrietta’s

Prior to reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks I had heard of the HeLa cells and their contribution to medical research, but I had never really known where they had come from. In fact, I had never even associated the cells I heard about with an actual human being before reading this book. I found the book intriguing in the way it interweaves the story of the Lack’s family with the scientific history, racial politics, and medical ethics. Not only did I learned a lot about the science surrounding the HeLa cells and the nature of medical ethics, I also learned about Henrietta and her family. Learning about the Lack’s family along with how much the HeLa cells have contributed to science helps to humanize the story and make it more than a scientific history and 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.

Can you imagine doctors stealing your cells and using them for scientific medical experiments without you or your family’s consent, and for your cells to be sold worldwide without anyone knowing, even your family, that you are the woman whose cells became immortal and helped in fascinating scientific and medical discoveries? This is the story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks whose immortal cells are known as HeLa. The book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” written by Rebecca Skloot is a scientific biography about Henrietta’s life before and after her death and the effects it had on others. In the book she explains her journey of discovering the truth behind Hela, she talks about the Lacks family, and the events caused by the HeLa cells.

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.

Before she died, a cancerous tumor was removed from her cervix (Freeman, 2016). While studying the samples collected from her biopsy, the first ever immortal cell line was discovered, which they also found to be the first cells to live outside of a human body (Biography, 2016). Her cells were labelled ‘HeLa’ cells, which derive from the first two letters of her first and last names, and were used to keep Henrietta anonymous (MedicineNet, 2016). These unique HeLa cells proved to be of immense value as it provided the field of medicine with a tool that led to the creation vaccines, cancer treatments and in vitro fertilisation among many other things (Dailey, 2017). Other than to diagnose her disease, Henrietta had never given consent for her cells to be used for further medical research. Her family was also never informed about the use of her cells until the early 1970s, neither were they compensated. Apparently “John Hopkins did not sell or profit from the discovery or distribution of HeLa cells” (McDaniels, 2014). Although this may be true, HeLa cells and their products have been sold all over the world, earning millions of dollars (NPR, 2010). This raised a number of ethical issues, as the Lacks family was extremely poor and couldn’t afford health insurance or substantial education. Henrietta’s son stated that “My mother would be so proud that her cells saves lives…but she’d be so horrified that Johns Hopkins profited while her family to this day has no rights” (McDaniels, 2017). This situation sparked debates on whether Henrietta and her family should have been informed and compensated or not, and generally what the rights an individual has on his or her genetic material (Kroll,

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot is a medical biography that has forced me to question the ethics of the methods used in past scientific discoveries. HeLa cells are an immortal cell line that has been a major tool used in biological discoveries; such as the vaccine for polio, discovery of genetic diseases, cloning, and HIV and cancer treatments. Although most of the general public rarely has heard of HeLa cells, they receive the benefits of the medical research HeLa cells have been instrumental in creating. Even those who know of HeLa cells most likely did not know they originated from a poor, black, uneducated woman named Henrietta Lacks, before the release of Skloot’s biography. Lacks had a fatal case of cervical cancer

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.