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Essay On Henrietta Lacks

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Loretta Pleasant was the birth name of the person we recognize today as Henrietta Lacks. She was raised by Grandpa Tommy at the age of 4 and grew up with a cousin named David Lacks (he was known as Day throughout the book. Fast forward a few years and now Henrietta at the age of 20 is married to a now 25 year old Day. After moving to Turner Station, Henrietta life starting to get complicated. After visiting the famous John Hopkins Hospital, Henrietta’s biopsy results came back and she was diagnosed with epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, Stage 1. During one of her routine checkups, Henrietta not knowingly due to a lack of transparency and medical terminology, Henrietta gave consent to Johns Hopkins to perform any operative procedures. …show more content…

Eventually her invasive cancer began to spread everywhere and soon the doctors began to do radiation therapy on her. On a side note, Henrietta probably wouldn’t have done this treatment knowingly if it would prevent her from having more children. The radiation treatment didn’t fare well for Henrietta. It made her skin black to the point it was darker than shadows. The disease worsen to the point where that Henrietta was in constant pain and could no longer perform basic task. She was then taken into John Hopkins and eventually her medication and treatments were discontinued. Her tumors by then had taken over most of her organs and the blackness as she says was spreading everywhere. Henrietta would eventually die on October 4th, 1951 at the age of 31 leaving her 5 children with her husband …show more content…

Deborah was struggling with her family, Zakariyya was in jail, and the discovery of their mother cells had been a cultural shock. It was by word of mouth that the Lacks family heard about Henrietta’s cells being immortal. It was 1973 and Bobbette was having a conversation with her friend’s brother in law. What happened was that he eventually told her that he worked at the National Cancer Institute and that he has been working with a cell from a woman named Henrietta lacks that died of cervical cancer at Hopkins in the fifties. After hearing about this new discovery, Bobbette relayed the message to her family. The new spread like wildfire and soon, the family was calling Hopkins for answers. After they called, scientist were asking for blood work from each of the direct family lineage of Henrietta Lacks. The scientist mislead the family thinking it would help the family prevent cancer for future Lacks but in actuality it was for more research. Then came a reporter named Michael Rogers that really shook up the Lacks family. He had publish an excerpt about how the HeLa cells were selling for $25 a vial. When the family found out about this, the all began to really take interest in this new development. Lawrence and Sonny then became really anger because they felt like there were being ousted millions of dollars while a few doctors made millions their mother’s

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Henrietta Lacks Timeline 1920’s August 5 1920-Henrietta Lacks is born in Roanoke, Virginia with the name Loretta Pleasant 1924-Henrietta’s mother Eliza Lacks Pleasant dies giving birth Henrietta went to go live with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks and her cousins Joe and Day on a tobacco farm 1930’s 1934-Henrietta becomes pregnant with her cousin Day’s child Lawrence and later a daughter Elsie who was mentally challenged 1940’s 1940 -Fred buys a bus ticket to travel up north to join his other cousins working at a steel mill outside of baltimore called turner station April 20 1941-Henrietta and Day get married December 1941-Japan bombs pearl Harbor which bring more demand from Turner Station Henrietta cousin Fred returns successfully from

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460 Words | 2 Pages

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black tobacco farmer,born in Roanoke, Virginia on August 1 ,1920.Henrietta’s mother died when Henrietta was very young, her dad did not wanted to take care of her and her siblings, so they were sent with different relatives. She grew up with her grandfather. Henrietta died at age of 31 years old of cervical cancer, on October 4, 1951. At the age of twenty-nine she felt a “knot” inside of her. In the year of 1950, she had a full-fledged tumor just three months  after she had felt the knot.

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741 Words | 3 Pages

Henrietta Lacks was a thirty-one year old African American who had five kids and married her cousin David Lacks. Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer, the doctors never informed Mrs. Lacks that her cells were to be tested on. The Lacks family was certainly not advised that Henrietta 's cells were growing at an incredible rate. Because of this, the cancer cells were shipped and bought across the world. The last 8 months of Henrietta’s death became a piece of history nobody would ever want to forget.

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717 Words | 3 Pages

Not wanting anyone to worry anymore about her, Henrietta didn't go to the follow-up appointments. Three months later she went back to the hospital with complaints of pain. There were tumors everywhere in her body. She was admitted to the hospital to stay until her death. She was in so much pain that she decided not to let her children in to see her.

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1938 Words | 8 Pages

She resided in Clover until she was twenty-two years old, when she moved to Turner Station, Maryland with her husband David Lacks and her first two children David Jr. and Elsie. For the duration of Henrietta’s life, she and her family belonged to a lower middle class of working black Americans. In 1951 when Henrietta felt a lump in her lower abdomen she sought out the medical care of the charity hospital, Johns Hopkins. In a pre-civil rights movement America, where segregation and demeaning of black Americans was prevalent in society, the colored ward of Hopkins was both the only place that would treat her and the only treatment she could

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956 Words | 4 Pages

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is at once a biography, a work of science journalism, and a book about the interconnected topics of ethics, justice, and racism. Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman who died from cervical cancer in 1951, was the source of the so-called HeLa cell line, which is “omnipresent” (Skloot, 2010, p. 24) in modern science. The HeLa cell line was derived from Henrietta Lacks’ cancerous tumor, which, against the wishes of Henrietta’s family was taken from her corpse and has been used for prolific and lucrative medical research for over seven decades (Skloot, 2010). Skloot (2010) described The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as “a biography of both the cells and the woman they came from—someone’s daughter, wife, and mother” (pp. 25-26). While the HeLa cells are ubiquitous in research, the woman from whom they came is, at best, a footnote in biological or medical textbooks.

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817 Words | 4 Pages

In 1951 Henrietta omplained of a “knot in her uterus” and went to John Hopkins Hospital, a charity hospital for the poor and black, to get it checked out. Her doctor diagnosed the hard lump as cervical cancer and started radiation treatments immediately. Because of the cancer Henrietta couldn’t take care of Elsie, her oldest female child that epilepsy with her other four children. So Henrietta sent Elsie to the Crownsville State Hospital or, hospital for the negro insane until she died a little while after her mother at the age of 15. During one of her surgery’s, her doctor secretly took a slice of her tumor and gave it to Dr. George Gey, a scientist who was trying to find an “immortal cell”. Not only did Gey find what he was looking for, he found cells that grew at an abnormal rate.

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239 Words | 1 Pages

Henrietta Lacks was a black tobacco farmer from the south who, in 1950, at the age of 30, she was diagnosed with aggressive cervical cancer. Lacks went to John’s Hopkins medical center for treatment for her cancer. In April of 1951, she underwent surgery to remove the larger tumor on her cervix. Henrietta Lacks, died three days following the surgery. Even though Henrietta Lacks died, her cells from the tumor have lived on and have made a major impact on the biomedical community.

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663 Words | 3 Pages

Despite the wrongdoings Henrietta Lacks was put through her cells did a lot to help advance science. Her cells helped develop different types of vaccines, which such as her daughter faced. A lot of good and bad came out of Henrietta’s

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1020 Words | 5 Pages

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta, an African-American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line. Told through the eyes of her daughter, Deborah Lacks, aided by journalist Rebecca Skloot. Deborah wanted to learn about her mother, and to understand how the unauthorized harvesting of Lacks cancerous cells in 1951 led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs, changing countless lives and the face of medicine forever. It is a story of medical arrogance and triumph, race, poverty and deep friendship between the unlikeliest people. There had been many books published about Henrietta’s cells, but nothing about Henrietta’s personality, experiences, feeling, life style etc.

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857 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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743 Words | 3 Pages

Racism in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Imagine your mother, sister, wife, or cousin was diagnosed with cervical cancer and you believed the doctors were doing everything in their power to help her. Only later you discovered her cells were used for research without consent and she was not properly informed of the risks of her treatment due to her race. This story happened and is told by Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Skloot use of narrative and her writing style enhances the understanding of the story. Henrietta Lacks was a young black woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at John Hopkins Hospital.

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988 Words | 4 Pages

Abstraction throughout history “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 measures of triumph.” The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks explores the meaning of being an abstraction or a general idea.

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Bushra Pirzada Professor Swann Engh-302 October 4th 2015 Rhetorical Analysis: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot tells the story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks who has her cervical cancer. It further goes to tell the audience how Henrietta altered medicine unknowingly. Henrietta Lacks was initially diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951; however, the doctors at John Hopkins took sample tissues from her cervix without her permission. The sample tissues taken from Henrietta’s cervix were used to conduct scientific research as well as to develop vaccines in the suture.

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Rebecca Skloot develops the idea that poverty comes with many difficult situations, in the book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks". True, Henrietta and her family were poor, could barely afford their medical bills, and they didn 't get the extended care that they deserved. You will learn how being poor can change your life and what is done with it . In the book, Henrietta 's daughter, Deborah, has many medical problems and she has to spend all her money on not even all her medicine.

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