The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

It took the Author Rebecca Skloot approximately 10 years to reveal the truth behind the HeLa cells, stolen by doctors and Scientists from a woman, Henrietta Lacks, in 1951. Skloot exposes how Doctors and scientist took advantage of Henrietta Lacks and her cells known as HeLa cells. Even after Henrietta death the neither doctors nor scientists told anyone about Henrietta cells, they were experimented, sold, and bought by many others. African0 Americans were kept in the dark, in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” Skloot managed to explain the unethical situations towards the African Americans.

The Hospital John Hopkins named after its founder, John Hopkins, was built in 1889 as a charity Hospital for those with financial issues or discrimination.

Henrietta Lacks was born as Loretta Pleasant in Roanoke, Virginia, on august 1, 1920. Henrietta Lacks like many other African Americans with financial issue or discrimination got treated in John Hopkins. African Americans such as Henrietta Lacks would not go to the Hospital unless they deemed necessary. With the lack of education African American knowledge was not deep enough to understand. Henrietta education went only as far as 6th grade; her husband day education went as far as 1st grade. Due to their little knowledge doctors and scientist had taken advantage of them. Africans Americans for them it seemed as if they were the new foreign exchange student in a classroom were everyone speaks a different language, (pg16) Skloot mentioned “For Henrietta, walking into Hopkins was like entering a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language. She knew about harvesting tobacco and butchering a pig, but she’d never heard the words such as cervix or biopsy……” Due to here education most African Americans only went to the hospital when it deemed necessary to them. They would go to the hospital with faith and trust that towards the doctors. It was like an unknown law to them that they should not question what the Doctors do to them, so when the doctors would tell them about a surgery they would take it in and say ok, have the surgery and go back to their everyday