Should The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

When first beginning The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, one would think it would be a biography about Henrietta, but it was so much more. It follows the Lacks family, as they learn about their mother, grandmother, sister, and matriarch. The only knowledge the Lacks family had of Henrietta was her medical records, and the family Bible. Deborah Lacks said, “Everybody in the world got her cells” (Skloot pg. 284). By examining the incredible way in which they grew and divided, she was right. Deborah Lacks was a very intelligent woman, though she struggled in school. Most of the Lacks children had some level of deafness, and Deborah had learned at a young age to “keep quiet with adults, so they never told [anyone] how much they were missing”

Most cells have what is called the Hayflick Limit. This means that most human cells only grow and divide around fifty to sixty times before cell death (Bartlett par. 1). Henrietta's cells didn't have that limit, they were growing exponentially and didn't stop. Going back to the early 1980's and trying to explain to the Lacks family how Henrietta's cells grew exponentially, rather than reaching the Hayflick Limit would be difficult, but not impossible. Because of their extreme distrust in doctors and scientists, using words like “Hayflick Limit,” “telomeres” and and enzyme called “telemorase” (Skloot pg. 217), would do nothing but confuse and frighten the

The exponential growth of Henrietta's cells allowed scientists to “perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human” (Skloot pg. 58). In hoping to find a cure for cancer, they exposed the cells to a vast number of chemicals, drugs and toxins. Scientists used HeLa to test Polio vaccines, eventually saving millions. The cells allowed scientists to discover that humans had 46 chromosomes, and was used in early cloning efforts. In-vetro fertilization is also a direct result of research done with the HeLa cells (“Popular