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The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

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What is Unintentional Becomes Valuable
The novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written almost sixty years after the death of Henrietta Lacks, was produced by Rebecca Skloot who, while researching, personally interacted with the family and educated them on the topic. After Henrietta’s death, her family is left with a great amount of confusion and dissatisfaction. Not only can Deborah Lacks, daughter of Henrietta, and her siblings not comprehend what happens to Henrietta and her cells, but an underlying pit of anger and fear within them deepens from not knowing. Until Skloot makes an appearance in their life, the Lackses trust no white person and live in oblivion to the world around them which Henrietta impacted. No previous reporter …show more content…

Skloot works hard throughout her time with Deborah to reiterate what her goals are: Letting the world learn the history of HeLa cells and Henrietta herself. At a later point during their research, Deborah begins interrogating Skloot with the same questions she has asked several times before which stem from her inability to trust others. She wants to make sure Skloot would not reveal certain personal information they gathered. All because of a smile on Skloot’s face, Deborah is triggered and begins asking ‘“Who you working for?”’ and proclaiming ‘“You’re lying!”’ (283) The intensity Deborah accuses Skloot with is key in conveying the weakness Deborah still holds even while knowing and working with Skloot. Even though Skloot could not include the private information in the novel, she records this conversation to ensure that the reader can track the evolution of Deborah’s mental outlook. In addition, Deborah suddenly has a stroke which Skloot blames herself for being the cause of the it. However, when healed, Deborah insists “From now on, I ride with you” (301). Because it took the span of the entire novel for Deborah to open up to the idea of riding with Skloot, Skloot makes it evident of the dramatic shift in Deborah’s trust. Skloot includes nonessential information such as who was riding in which car and snippets of conversations that did not pertain to Henrietta. This dialogue highlights Deborah’s development emotionally so she can be more

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book written by Rebecca Skloot. Chapter 1 begins shortly after Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, and her son, Joe, were born. After those two were born, she then began to experience vaginal bleeding at the wrong time of the month. Feeling like something was wrong, Henrietta rushed to the doctor. She only went to see the doctor “If she felt she had no other choice”.

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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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Her main goal was to present the story of Henrietta and her family while also discussing science, race, class, and ethics. She did so by combining three sub-purposes: showing Henrietta’s true story, discussing race and social class, and critiquing the scientists and their ethics. Overall, Skloot told Henrietta’s story and helped to educate in order to prevent something like this in the future. As one of Henrietta’s family members says at the end of the book, “This is their story now. They need to take hold of it and let it teach them they can change the world too”

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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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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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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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Her sample tissues were known as HeLa cells. Skloot purpose is to create awareness among the audience about

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Racism in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks “Excuse me, ma’am/sir, can I interest you in a product?” Every time I visit the mall, the sales people at the kiosk always bother me, in hopes that they can sell me their product. I, personally, ignore these people and continue on with my day, but once I observed a man become persuaded into buying a summer home in Florida because of the “amazing offer” the sales kiosk worker offered him. Therefore, people can persuade others into doing things they would not normally do using the same techniques authors use to try and persuade their readers to believe their point of view on a topic. In the 21st century non-fiction biography, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, American author, Rebecca Skloot

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Poverty also led the Lacks 's family to injustice for them and their mother 's cells because they simply couldn 't afford a lawyer. The book says, "So in attempt to get Hopkins to give them what they saw as their cut of the HeLa profits they made handouts about Henrietta Lack 's family being owed their due, and gave them to customers at Lawrence 's store". This illustrates that although Lawrence and Sonny couldn 't afford a lawyer, the next best thing was to spread the word, and also shows how they just had to make do with what they had. Rebecca Skloot shows how poverty was a major problem for the Lacks 's family in, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks". Ranging from medical problems to being an easy target to having injustice.

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The purpose of literature is to move the reader. Some authors turn to laughter or tears to make the most significant impact. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a biography by Rebecca Skloot, Skloot uses a pathos appeal to incite the reader to pity characters in the book, such as Deborah and Elsie Lacks. As Rebecca Skloot and Deborah go looking for information on Elsie, Deborah’s sister, they go to the Hospital for the Negro Insane.

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An essential part of modern society relied on trust, especially the trust of doctors and scientists. People had the right to make an informed decision about their bodies and body parts. People had a right to their body parts, both attached and cell samples collected by doctors. The actions that the medical professions made will continue to affect future generations in both positive and negative ways. In the contemporary biographical novel, the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot used logical opinions to argue about the importance of consent to reveal the lack of morality from those in the medical field which continues to persist today.

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In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, education plays a substantial role in what occurs throughout the book. Many major events are related to people not understanding what is happening to them. Skloot brings up the topic ’Lack of Education,’ frequently and this affected Henrietta's treatments, and how her family viewed the situation, and how the black community viewed scientist overall. In many occasions lack of education causes a major event to happen, “she didn't write much, and she hadn't studied science in school,”(pg 16) with little education Henrietta had no idea what was wrong with her. Without Henrietta or her family knowing symptoms of certain diseases Henrietta does not go to the hospital till the end.

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