HeLa was an immortal line of cells that led to many scientific discoveries. The book “The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks” has many different points you can view from. The book shows how history changed over time, how being African American and poor gets you no rights to privacy, and most importantly how medicine advanced because of Henrietta’s cells. Henrietta was one of ten children. Her mother died while giving birth in a barn.
While she was in radiation treatment two samples of her cervix were removed, without her permission, one that was healthy and a cancerous one. During this time permission was not required nor customarily sought. These cells from the cervix are what make Henrietta Lacks a contributor to modern research. Those cells are known as the HeLa cell line. This cell line is now being commonly used in biomedical research (Moorhead).
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.
Nonfiction books can often expand ones knowledge, especially in the subject of science. In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, writer of the book and journalist Rebecca Scloot finds herself looking at an image of an African American whom had a tumor growing in her body without knowledge of it. This woman in the photo, Henrietta Lacks, although her name was unknown by most scientist and teachers, helped change the face of medicine back then and even today. Henrietta Lacks started getting treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital at age 31. The physicians at the hospital cut a dime size piece of her tumor and sent it into the lab where George Gey then put it on clots of chicken blood to see if the cells would grow.
What could not have possibly been imagined was how this could ultimately affect the family of Henrietta Lacks. HeLa cells were unlike any other cells. They grew in mass quantities, and continued to multiply and grow in culture whereas other human cells stopped. This eventually lead to interest in the Lacks family and their genetics. Some family members were afraid for their medical health and what would happen to their genetic material if they went to the doctor.
Henrietta Lacks died in the 1950’s but her cells are still alive today. You will learn how her cells are still alive and what her cells have been used for and what they are being used for. Henrietta Lacks was born in Roanoke, Virginia. She was a poor woman who worked as a southern tobacco farmer, she worked in the same farm as her ancestors, and had a middle school education( "Five Reasons Henrietta Lacks is the Most Important Woman ..." ).
Henrietta Lacks, an African American tobacco farmer from southern Virginia, was diagnosed with cervical cancer at 30 years old. During her treatment at John Hopkins Hospital, one of the doctors took a piece of her tumor without her knowledge or consent and sent it to scientists who had been unsuccessfully attempting to grow tissues in culture for decades. There is no explanation as to why, but her cells never died. To this day they are still alive and have been used throughout the years to great advantages in curing diseases. Henrietta’s cells have played a part in some of the world’s most important medical advances such as the development of the polio vaccine, cloning, vitro fertilization, gene mapping, and they even went up in the first space
And somewhere along the line, HeLa cells came from Helen Lane. Whether this was done to keep Henrietta’s identity a secret or not, give credit to Henrietta Lacks, who was an African American woman during the 40’s, Henrietta’s identity was kept a secret. Apart from that, I have already mentioned the hundreds of innovations brought about by Hela cells. Only for Henrietta’s children and spouse to never receive any credit, or compensation for that matter. The Lacks family has paid large amounts for medical coverage and
Henrietta Lacks Honor Essay “The reason Henrietta's cells were so precious was because they allowed scientists to perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human. They cut HeLa cells apart and exposed them to endless toxins, radiation, and infection. They bombarded them with drugs, hoping to find one that would kill malignant cells without destroying normal ones.” (58)”Throughout the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” there are many examples of how the HeLa cell of Henrietta Lacks provided cellular information and examples that helped mold many cellular discoveries and experiments.
During the twentieth century, the word had known many unprecedented inventions and discoveries that had radically shaped our way of life. The field of discovery that touched human’s life the most, was the medical field. One of the most important achievements in science that opened the doors to many other scientific discoveries was the seccefull culture of the first human cells in laboratory. Those cells were named HeLa. HeLa cells were taken from the cervical of a black woman in Charles Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, where she went to trait cancer.
Some family members still want to sue the people gaining money from HeLa, but others simply want people to see who Henrietta was (327-328). Deborah, Henrietta’s daughter, told Skloot, “Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different. (276)” So many advances have been made in science and medicine that the majority of people on the Earth have been affected by HeLa cells at least on time in their lives.
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.
Henrietta was admitted to the Johns Hopkins Hospital to treat her cervical cancer, where she eventually passed away. George Gey, who was the cell biologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, then harvested the cells from her tumor. With the help of his wife, Margret, and assistant, Mary, they successfully turned Henrietta’s contribution into HeLa cells. HeLa cells are an essential universal tool that can be used for medical research and advancement. Since the HeLa cells grew at a rapid rate, they were produced and sold rapidly for widespread research.
On October 4, 1951, Henrietta Lacks died of aggressive cervical cancer at only 31 years old. What she did not know at the time of her death, however, is that Dr. George Otto Gey would discover that cells taken from her body continued to replicate without dying. These cells are used in research for many diseases, as well as being sent into space. This first immortal cell line has impacted history greatly, consequently changing the course of the medical field entirely. Henrietta Lacks is the most significant person in history as her cells have contributed to important research, launched a multibillion dollar industry, and her situation has shed light on certain issues in the medical field.
Scientists and doctors made great discoveries with the HeLa cells of Henrietta Lacks. The family of Henrietta Lacks had to live with the aftermath of decisions made by doctors and
