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Summary: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

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What is the purpose of a legacy?In both stories, their legacy is changing the medical industry. Both authors carefully depicted the effect the stories will have on future generations. They expressed this by using writing styles such as, detail and imagery. “You’ve got bad blood” is a story that explains what the Tuskegee syphilis experiment was. Showing how the participants of the experiment were mistreated and lied to. The details in the author’s writing are a remark, who added: “They been doctoring me off and on ever since then.” This quote goes deeper into how these men were treated while under the researchers supervision. The people’s trust was betrayed by the people they thought would help their health. People knew that this would have …show more content…

Just like the other stories, this author also uses detail but has more imagery in her writing. “Sixth or seventh grade education; housewife and mother of five.Patient has asymptomatic neurosyphilis but cancelled syphilis treatments. Physician recommended diagnostics and referred to specialists to rule out infections or cancer. Patient canceled appointment.” This shows how Henrietta Lacks had a lot of possible medical issues but she never made it to those appointments to help her. She was most likely scared of going to the doctors, which was true. She was worried that they would take away her ability to have children, but she would most likely be less scared if she had a proper education.Though no law or code of ethics required doctors to ask permission before taking tissue from a living patient, the law made it very clear.removing tissue from the dead was illegal.” Even though they eventually got permission from her husband to do an autopsy, what would have stopped them from doing it without his permission. The doctors took the tissue from Henrietta without her knowledge. Even if there weren't any consequences from doing so, it is still wrong. They performed an experiment without her knowing she was involved, basically betraying her

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558 Words | 3 Pages

In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Henrietta had a normal life before she found that she had cancer and everything change. Henrietta was born on August 1, 1920. When she was four years old her mom died and her father took the family back to his hometown of Clover. His father took them back to Clover so he could send his ten children to different relatives to live with them. Henrietta went to live with his grandfather and her cousin David or most people call him Day.

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158 Words | 1 Pages

In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks chapter 23 “It’s Alive” it talks about Bobbette Lacks. Bobbette Lacks, Henrietta’s daughter-in-law, had dinner at her friend's house when she found out that her friend had been working with HeLa cells. While in disbelief, Bibbette asked Gardenia why no one had told Henrietta's family that the part of her was still alive. Dr. McKusick, a scientist who first published Henrietta’s name, had access to Henrietta’s children and husband’s medical records.

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193 Words | 1 Pages

Cancer is one of the scariest diagnoses to go through or experience with a close family member or friend. Henrietta Lacks a black woman in the 50’s was diagnosed with cervical cancer little did she know her doctors stole her cells for research and never spoke about it. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks you get to experience what the author. Rebecca Skloot goes through as she tries to figure out what happened with Henrietta Lack in the early 200’s Skloot gets in contact to get to know the situation better but the Lacks family knew little to none about Henrietta’s condition and the research that was being done to her revolutionary cells.

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1176 Words | 5 Pages

022300 Courtney Davis Mrs. Allinder IB Literature 10 October 2016 Emotional Ties Created In The Reader Thesis: In the creative non-fiction book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot, creates emotional ties to the reader through the character, Deborah. Topic Sentence: Deborah was spoken about by Skloot before Deborah appeared as a live character with dialogue to form a founding idea about Deborah in the reader. Evidence: When Skloot had finally received Deborah’s number from Pattillo, Pattillo gave Skloot a list of what to do and what not to do when “dealing with” Deborah. He told her not to be aggressive or “clinical”, not to force Deborah to do anything, and definitely “don’t talk down” to her because “she hates that”.

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853 Words | 4 Pages

They were not educated so when the doctor would say something scientific they would trust every word while not even understanding what he was saying. This part of informed consent was stressed throughout the book because in today’s society most people have enough education to have a general idea what is going on when they are at the hospital about to have a procedure done, making it seem

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903 Words | 4 Pages

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot and examines the life of Henrietta Lacks and her peculiar situation with her mysterious cells. This paper will focus on chapter two in the novel and how it becomes the most important part of the book when it comes to understanding Henrietta’s life story. Chapter two is called “Clover (1920-1942)”, the chapter itself dissects the early life of Henrietta and the challenges she had growing up. In this chapter, it goes over the gender, economic, and racial obstacles that greatly impacted her. It is important to understand the socio-economic conditions that led Henrietta to be treated less than human.

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1434 Words | 6 Pages

Since no doctor was provided because of Heck’s poor investigation, it would lead to an inconclusive investigation, as there is lack of evidence. This leads to a false verdict and later, an innocent man’s death. Also during the trial, Atticus questions Mr. Tate regarding which of Mayella’s eye was

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817 Words | 4 Pages

The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks is about a woman’s cancer and how her “immortal” cells furthered today’s scientific knowledge. “Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant in Roanoke, Virginia, on August 1, 1920” (Skloot 18). When Henrietta was 4, her mom died and her dad left her with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks in Clover, Virginia. She stayed in Clover with her cousins and worked on a tobacco farm from dawn till dusk.

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744 Words | 3 Pages

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is much more unique than any other books I read before this. The books involves with the Henrietta Lacks who has cervical cancer that turns to be non operational. Henrietta eventually dies, until to be autopsy for research and finding a vaccine for polio. I wasn’t only surprised by what happened to Henrietta, but, only to find out what happened to her children, such as Elsie, Joe, and Deborah. I was shocked to read about how Elsie died and where she died.

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1588 Words | 7 Pages

They believed it was best not to confuse or upset patients with frightening terms they might not understand, like cancer. Doctors knew best, and most patients didn’t question that… it was understood that black people didn’t question white people’s and their professional judgment. ”(Chapter 8, Page 62 by Rebecca Skloot). This is a very important section in the book because it says a lot of black people not being informed of what is happening to them. Henrietta’s doctor lied to her saying she was fine, because they did not want to “scare” her.

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1381 Words | 6 Pages

What would you do if a doctor took your cells without consent and shortly after, your cells went viral, being sent all over the world to millions of different scientists? Well, I can’t say that Henrietta Lacks lived through this, but I can say that her cells did. Bioethics, the ethics of medical and biological research, has been a controversial issue throughout the U.S. for years. Different laws have been formalized to help tame the fire on the topic of consent and mortality. In the year of 1951, Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer and had too many tumors to count inside her rotting body.

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988 Words | 4 Pages

Without the consent of the Lacks family, Mcksick started using their blood for what would begin a new era of genetics research. In Today’s society this would be a major violation of ethics and be considered immoral but at the time of the research it was just considered a violation of privacy. Situations as the misguided and uninformed family is why Skloot believed that many scientists and the media saw the Lacks family as abstractions rather than a family who wanted to have an idea of what was going

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919 Words | 4 Pages

An essential part of modern society relied on trust, especially the trust of doctors and scientists. People had the right to make an informed decision about their bodies and body parts. People had a right to their body parts, both attached and cell samples collected by doctors. The actions that the medical professions made will continue to affect future generations in both positive and negative ways. In the contemporary biographical novel, the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot used logical opinions to argue about the importance of consent to reveal the lack of morality from those in the medical field which continues to persist today.

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1373 Words | 6 Pages

He remembers what happened to his mother when she became sick with cancer and remembers that her cells were taken. Together with the stories of kidnapped African American people he is very distrusting of the medical system and does not want to have anything bad happen to him. Add to the fact that African American patients were known to have sub par health care in the days of Henrietta and that segregation was still something that happened, he might not have ever felt comfortable seeking medical attention. Also, due to lack of jobs in some areas as well as less education leading to less job opportunities, many African Americans are not able to access health care. Many clinics in low income

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1342 Words | 6 Pages

The men were not informed how the disease is spread from one individual to another. While the men were easily persuaded because they were not well educated, they were also willing to join because fifty dollars would be given to each man. During this time many African American men suffered financially; racism and segregation were still very common during this time frame. Miss Evers and Dr. Brodus were taking part in an unethical act when they took advantage of the men in terms of their lack of knowledge and money. Miss Evers and the Doctor knew very well that the men were uneducated and poor, so they used these two factors to gain their own personal gain.

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