The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Analysis

The issue of privacy has been one dating back to the beginning of society. In order to protect it we have erected walls around us and called them homes, fences and called them territories, borders and called them countries. As the modern day arrived, society innovated to the point that ownership and privacy are no longer clear. Science has developed at a rate where morals and laws cannot keep up, more specifically, in the medical department. Such a problem is detailed in Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In it, privacy is breached through the intimacy of the text itself and the events in which Henrietta’s cells were harvested without her consent then used to build a multimillion dollar industry. Over the years and

In the first chapter of the book, Skloot writes that “Henrietta slid a finger inside herself and rubbed it across her cervix until she found [...] a hard lump…” (Skloot 15). The detail that the author describes the situation is vulgar to a degree that most keep to themselves, as it is talking about a very personal aspect of someone’s life- their body. Consequently, the book itself is in and of itself a breach of privacy, not from a legal perspective but from a social and moral one. Furthermore, the person whomst is being written about passed away long before the book was written, meaning there was no direct consent from the Henrietta even if her family approved of it. If she was still alive, she may not have wanted such detail in her biography. Skloot’s accuracy was a means in order to maintain a sense of reality in her text- no sugar coating- so that the reader can have the closest idea to an unbiased view. Whether the theft was justified by saving numerous lives or not is up to the audience. The biography doesn’t only breach Henrietta's privacy, but also recites the story of how her cells were

In 2015, “the private information of more than 50 million individual” (Solon) by a private data firm based in the UK called Cambridge Analytica. The purpose of the firm is to read data in order to provide information to clients, be it advertisements or general consensus on pressing issues. Essentially, the firm is payed for information on people. In her article, “The Six Weeks That Brought Cambridge Analytica Down”, Olivia Solon describes that Facebook’s response to the data breach was simply asking the firm to delete it. In the recent investigation, Facebook was questioned as to why they acted how they did to which they replied that they trusted that Cambridge Analytica did as they were told. Adding further to suspicion, Facebook was aware of the data breach back in 2015 but only banned the firm from their information hours before the release of an article that blew the whistle on the firm. Information gained from Facebook on the users was used even for President Donald Trump’s