Dehumanizing Henrietta Lacks

Elie Wiesel writes, “We must not treat anyone as an abstraction.” Rebecca Skloot wrote The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman that grew up on a tobacco farm. Henrietta in her teen years was attracted to a boy named Day her cousin. Day and Henrietta got married and had family. Henrietta found out that she has cervical cancer. Doctors discovered Henrietta’s cells were very different than all other cells, the doctors called the cells HeLa. The scientific community and the media treat Henrietta and her family as abstractions through dehumanizing experiments, the use of Henrietta as a human interest piece, and the lack of information given to the Lacks family. The scientific community and the media treat Henrietta and her family as abstractions through dehumanizing experiments. Henrietta was looked at as an object

The information that the lacks family had after Henrietta’s death was very limited. The lacks Family was the last consideration when individuals wanted information about Henrietta. Gold was a reporter that somehow got all of Henrietta’s medical records. Skloot writes, “When I asked Gold whether he tried to speak to the lacks family, he said, “I think I wrote some letters and made some calls. But the addresses and the phone wasn’t really my focus . . . . I just thought they might make some interesting color for the scientific story.” (211) gold never wanted the consent form the lacks family. He only wanted to make his story more interesting by spreading the life of Henrietta all around for anyone to see. When he did try to contact the lacks family he did not even try, he tried one number for them knowing they probably did not have a phone. When gold tells skloot that he “thinks” he contacted then that really shows that he didn’t care if he got the families consent. The lacks family was not looked as the family of Henrietta, but just a source to help with his