Sasha Amos 07/27/2017 Rebecca Skloot tells a story on Loretta Pleasant also known as Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who had cervical cancer. Without her consent, her doctors took her cells and used them to create HeLa. The Lacks family had no knowledge of what Henrietta’s cells had done.
Hannah Henriques ANT Dr. Voelker September 28, 2017 Henrietta Lacks Book Review In Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot documents the years surrounding her research of Henrietta Lacks, a woman known to most of the world as HeLa. Henrietta lived and died a poor tobacco farmer from the south, living and working on the same farm as her enslaved ancestors. But little did Henrietta know that her cells would change the course of medical research and history forever.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, HIPAA, is a common term heard around health care today. HIPAA, a privacy rule to protect a person’s health information, is one of the first things that came to my mind when I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This book, written by Rebecca Skloot, was published in 2010, which was after HIPAA was enacted. The story of Henrietta Lacks starts long before HIPAA, and her name was leaked as the source of what became well-known as HeLa cells. HeLa cells are cancer cells that were removed from Henrietta’s cervix, and were subsequently utilized in research for numerous medical discoveries.
In the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks the author Rebecca Skloot brings up the topic of education various times throughout these seven chapters and thus helps the reader understand what a big discovery it was when Henrietta cells were found to be immortal and the medical revolution it brought. Henrietta Lacks was born August, 21, 1920 as a Loretta Pleasant and is unknown how she became Henrietta Lacks according to Skloot(pg.18) and in the distance future she would eventually visit Hopkins Hospital and inevitably starts the process of how her cells created a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry. January, 29th, 1951 Henrietta went into Hopkins Hospital for a knot she felt in her womb and thus was examined by her doctor Howard Jones and was diagnosed with cervical cancer, in the past year Henrietta knew something was wrong with her but was too scared to go to the hospital for fear they would take her womb but eventually after she had her fifth child Joe that year she went to her local doctor but was referred to Hopkins after her knot tested negative for syphilis. Only a few days later after her visit to Hopkins; Jones got her tests and resulted in that she had Epidermoid Carcinoma of the cervix ,
On the day of October 4, 1951 a women by the name of Henrietta Lacks passed away at the age of thirty-one due to cervical cancer. Even though Lacks died on that day she still lives to this very day. This is because then Lacks was undergoing treatment for her cancer at John Hopkins Hospital her doctor took samples Lack’s tumor caused by the cancer. Researchers tested to see how long her cells could live while outside of her body. Researches were surprised to find out that somehow Lacks’ cells wouldn’t die.
It was a rainy day in Maryland, Baltimore when a colored woman quickly jumped out of her husband car and then swiftly rushed past the colored restroom, “the only one she was allowed to use”(Skloot 13) and into the entrance of the John Hopkins hospital. Upon her arrival, the women went straight to the receptionist desk and unhesitantly reported “I got a knot on my womb”(Skloot 13). After she was taken for a medical examination, the woman was then told to go home without any idea or clue that there was something deadly that was both growing and dividing on her cervix. The woman was known as Henrietta Lacks, and this book nicely depicted how a poor, uneducated African American woman was taken advantage without her consent and then became one of the greatest figures in the medical field. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a non-fiction research and biographical novel written by Rebecca Skloot, which depicted the life and the
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book that includes her biography, then her childhood to her tragic death; the story of her family over various decades; Skloot’s research and her relationship with the Lacks family, especially Deborah; and the story of the HeLa cells. Henrietta Lacks was known by scientists as HeLa was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951, and then became one of the most important tools in medicine. They were necessary for the development of the polio vaccine, cloning, and much more scientific developments. A doctor at Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without her consent and then sent it down to scientists who been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades. Henrietta's
Since the 2010 release of Rebecca Skloot’s New York Times bestselling non-fiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many people both in and outside the scientific community are at least aware of the story of Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells . The almost-mythical tale of the immortal HeLa cell line, taken from Henrietta Lacks’s cancer-ridden cervix and grown in culture for more than sixty years now, has evolved and spread throughout the scientific and popular imaginary , surfacing in accounts of the miraculous power and possibility of scientific research and debates surrounding medical ethics . While HeLa was used to develop the polio vaccine, continues to be of use in the research of AIDS, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease, and a host of other medical conditions, and even sent up in the first space missions to test the conditions of human cells in zero gravity, the cell line also carries with it the history of the woman in whom it originated, the history of slavery and racism in America, and the entanglement of race, gender, class, and sexuality in the sciences.
Even though Henrietta’s life was not always easy, everyone in her life, including close friends and family learn to push through the struggles present in each situation until the end of a battle, which is shown in, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. “ The next morning [Henrietta] climbed from the Buick outside Hopkins again, telling Day and the children not to worry” ( Skloot 31). As Henrietta was in the stage of discovering the early stages of cancer, her family had to endure the mental pain of their mother, which shows that even though their mother is not healthy the children still have to think positive to get through these tough times.
The Problems African Americans Faced The racial segergation and persecution that African American’s faced were truly unforgetable. With the complete abolishment of slavery colored people still face racial persucation all through out the 1900’s. The family that was hugly impacted were the Lacks. “In The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks”, the main role in the book was Henrietta the mother of five kids who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the time. The docters did many test’s on Henrietta which are now illigal to proceed on someone.
The HeLa cell line was known to be the oldest successful cell line which has been extensively used in scientific inquiry. It became an invaluable tool in the advancement on of medical and clinical researches encompassing the development of vaccines, understanding the physiology of viruses and other infectious agents, devising developing in vitro fertilization techniques, and even in the use of genomic sequencing. Remarkable as the number of medical frontiers and research breakthroughs that were pushed and made possible by the famous immortal cells—HeLa, it has also been a great “source of anxiety, confusion and frustration for the family of the woman, Henrietta Lacks, from whom the cells were taken without consent more than 60 years ago”
In the reading of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, the author Rebecca Skloot makes it well known that Henrietta Lacks, while a patient at John Hopkins Hospital samples of her cells was taken from her without her or her family’s knowledge or consent. We are made aware of this on page 33 “though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting samples or asked if she wanted to be a donor — Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta’s cervix”. As a health professional, you are violating that patients’ rights and in this case the Lacks right to privacy were violated. The way that the lacks family’s right to privacy was the fact that Henrietta’s cells often referred to as the HeLa cells
In Nothing But the Truth there is one thing that stood out to me throughout the entire book. The whole book is full of lies. Philip Malloy tells lies about everything and to everyone. He lies to his parents, the principal, and even to a reporter that is interviewing him. Throughout the book we continue to see the lies play out until the very end of the book when Philip finally decides to tell the truth.
Inequality has been around since the stone age and continues to make its presence known today. Rebecca Skloots book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is an example of the inequality shown to African-Americans in the medical world. Specifically, the unequal medical care Henrietta Lacks received, which many other black women experienced as well. In her book, Skloot suggests that African-American women suffer from psychological effects after receiving unequal medical care, do not receive equal medical treatment, and are more likely to die from maternal complications. Researchers agree, stating that these are common occurrences in the medical industry.
In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Rose Mary is the mother of the Walls children who often does not act as a true adult. Rose Mary’s attitudes and behaviours are childlike, and therefore her children must take on responsibility for the lack her own. Rose Mary ignores her obligations as a parent and chooses an irresponsible way of life which endangers her children. Rose Mary has never properly matured into adulthood due to her lack of financial stability, bliss ignorance and optimism, and her selfishness nature.
