Henrietta Lacks Research Papers

"Over the course of 26 years, 600,000,000 HeLa cells have been produced in my laboratory each week, for a total of 800 billion cells" (The Amazing HeLa, n.d). The HeLa cells are the first cells grown out of a person and are still alive! The cells are from a women named Henrietta Lacks. She was a poor African American women that had cervical cancer and died from it spreading throughout her body. These cells were taken form Henrietta in the 50s but the doctor never got permission to take a tissue sample (Skloot, 100). Her cells have became immortal but Henrietta and her family never gave consent. Even her husband said no after her death! But the cells were taken before her death. If Henrietta Lacks was a white and upper class, the story of her

During the 50s most hospitals did not treat patients that were African American. The ones that did, had certain wards called "Color wards" we're African Americans would go to be treated. Hospital Discrimination in Detroit states, even in certain hospitals, people's rooms were separated by race and gender (Hospital Discrimination in Detroit, n.d). This time period has been know for the discrimination and segregation of African American citizens. Furthermore in this time period African Americans could not go to the same school, use the same bathrooms, and drink out of the same drinking fountains as white people. Also in hospitals most patients did not question there doctors even white patients. Rebecca Skloot states, "Especially black patients in public wards. This was 1951 in Baltimore, segregation was law, and it was understood that black people didn’t question white people’s professional judgment" (Skloot, 63). This example demonstrates that Africans were not equal in the hospital setting even in the wards they were treated in. Skloot continues and states, "Many black patients were just glad to be getting treatment, since discrimination in hospitals was widespread"(Skloot, 63). This shows that African Americans did not feel equal and where just happy to

According to Howard Jones, "Henrietta got the same care any white patient would have; the biopsy, the radium treatment, and radiation were all standard for the day" (Skloot, Pg 64). However Rebecca Skloot states, "But several studies have shown that black patients were treated and hospitalized at later stages of their illnesses than white patients. And once hospitalized, they got fewer pain medications, and had higher mortality rates" (Skloot, Pg 64). So this shows that Henrietta could have been placed into the hospital at an earlier stage and she could have lived a longer