Essay On Henrietta Lacks

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.

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

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