ipl-logo

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

1559 Words7 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Healthcare ethical dillema

My Tissue or Your Tissue?
Where have the ethics gone in medicine today? Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks discusses the life and influence of Henrietta Lacks within the medical community. Henrietta Lacks was an African American tobacco farmer from Clover, Virginia, whose cells were wrongly stolen from her without her knowledge or consent in 1951. Cells that would inevitably become the world’s first immortal cell line, thus transforming modern medicine forever. Through its vast impact within medical research, HeLa cells were able to aid in such efforts as the “development of the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more” (Skloot 75). While the Hela cells allowed for many accomplishments throughout the medical …show more content…

Consequently taking away the patients decision and instead giving physicians full control to seemingly “play god”, as the decision is now in their hand. Through this problem within the medical community, society has inadvertently traded off ethics in pursuit for common good (Martinez). Because of this, such practices as benevolent deception in hospitals had room to emerge during the Jim Crow era. As doctors apparently took the decision of the patient in their own hands. Benevolent deception was a widely common practice during the times of Henrietta Lacks. It was a practice in …show more content…

For instance, laws on informed consent needs to be more specific and easy to understand in order to help society. By including one set guidelines on informed consent for all areas in the medical field it allows patients to have a consistent concept of informed consent where the protocols are clearly stated for the medical community as a whole. Through this, society benefits greatly as they are able to essentially take back their rights over their own bodies and tissues. Therefore, everyone seemingly has a sense of ownership over their own tissues until they decide to donate it to research after thoroughly being

Show More
Related

Summary Of The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

171 Words | 1 Pages

In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, the author demonstrates the harsh realities that many African Americans faced in the medical and scientific field during the mid 20th century. The author shows the unjust practices of this time period through interviews with the Lacks family and medical professionals. These harsh realities are proven when Skloot talks to Henrietta’s family. Henrietta’s husband, Day, explains how they took samples from Henrietta’s body without consent when Skloot writes, “Day clenched his remaining three teeth. "I didn't sign no papers," he said.

Read More

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

611 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

1695 Words | 7 Pages

Introduction In this book, author Rebecca Skloot sets out to give a biography of the late Henrietta Lacks. She had first heard of Henrietta Lacks in her freshman biology class at 16 years old. After only learning her name and skin color, Skloot became very much curious. Twenty-two years later, all her research was published as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Read More

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

1809 Words | 8 Pages

The HeLa cells not only survived, they grew intensely and kept right on growing as much as their given space would allow. It seemed like the cells would never stop growing, thus came the label of the immortal cells (Skloot, 2010). HeLa cells became a very important part of scientific research, and Henrietta’s name became well-known among Gey’s colleagues. On November 2, 1953, the real name behind the HeLa cells was leaked by the press, but they got it wrong, Henrietta Lakes was reported as the source of the cells in the Minneapolis Star. Gey and Dr. TeLinde, the cervical cancer specialist at John Hopkins, decided to allow their story about Henrietta to be told in a more accurate account, but they wanted to withhold her name.

Read More

Henrietta Lacks: Her Cells In The 1950's And Today

734 Words | 3 Pages

Her cells have been bought and sold by the billions. The Lacks family still cannot afford health insurance(Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta

Read More

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

577 Words | 3 Pages

Dana Garcia Ripley Honors English 2 20 March 2017 Lack of Justice The book The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot tells the story of an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks whose cells made one of the greatest medical contributions ever. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer at the age of 31. Cells were taken from her body without her knowledge. Rebecca L. Skloot is a self-employed science writer who specializes in science and medicine.

Read More

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

1037 Words | 5 Pages

In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the story of a impoverish African American woman is revealed in beautiful and amazing detail. The book consists of three main sections, wherein Rebecca Skloot describes the various aspects of Henrietta Lacks’ legacy. The three sections are life, death, and immortality. The purpose of the book was to expose the hidden story of the HeLa cells used in research across the country. This also exposes the ethical issues of what was basically a cell harvest on Henrietta Lacks without her proper understanding and consent.

Read More

The Backtory Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

689 Words | 3 Pages

The book, clips, and movie have shown the controversy of medicine and research, as a patient’s cell is currently being used without the family’s consent. The overall story and plot of this book and film have been overly emotional because of the grief of the family as they face hardship without Henrietta. The story starts with the author, Rebecca Skloot, and her experiences with Deborah in discovering the backstory of Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca got in contact with Deborah’s family to write her book about “HeLa” cells because she got interested after a lecture with her professor. The reasoning is because no one is aware of the background of these cells.

Read More

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

449 Words | 2 Pages

Jade Sherwin May 14th, 2018 Essay test Rebecca Skloot’s book “The immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” tells the story of Henrietta Lacks a young mother, a descendant of slaves, whose suffering changed the course of medical research and made life healthier for the rest of us. Henrietta was diagnosed with cancer in numerous ways the Lacks family’s right to privacy was violated. The Lacks family’s right to privacy was violated by people exposing the Lacks’s information “Newspapers and magazines “published articles about Henrietta , one of the pivotal figures in the crusade against cancer.”

Read More

How The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Changed The Medical Field

929 Words | 4 Pages

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about the life of the woman whose cells changed the medical field and about the impact those cells have on her family. Henrietta was a black woman who grew up in Clover, Virginia in a family of poor, tobacco farmers. Her mother died when she was young and her father left shortly after, leaving her to be raised by her grandfather, who was also raising her cousin, Day. She later married Day and they moved to Turner Station, outside of Baltimore, Maryland because Day was able to get a decent paying job. Henrietta and Day had five children: Lawrence, Elsie, Sonny, Deborah, and Zakariyya.

Read More

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

817 Words | 4 Pages

In 1951 Henrietta omplained of a “knot in her uterus” and went to John Hopkins Hospital, a charity hospital for the poor and black, to get it checked out. Her doctor diagnosed the hard lump as cervical cancer and started radiation treatments immediately. Because of the cancer Henrietta couldn’t take care of Elsie, her oldest female child that epilepsy with her other four children. So Henrietta sent Elsie to the Crownsville State Hospital or, hospital for the negro insane until she died a little while after her mother at the age of 15. During one of her surgery’s, her doctor secretly took a slice of her tumor and gave it to Dr. George Gey, a scientist who was trying to find an “immortal cell”. Not only did Gey find what he was looking for, he found cells that grew at an abnormal rate.

Read More

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

1150 Words | 5 Pages

Intrigued by the story of the immortal cells, she sought out for more information on the woman behind the cells. After class, she went to her teacher and asked if he knew more about Henrietta but all he knew was her name (4). That is the event that started Skloot on her mission of justice for Henrietta Lacks. Since the, Skloot has done over a decade of research for her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. She talked to as many, if not all, living family members of Henrietta and she interviewed every doctor, scientist, journalist, and more possible.

Read More

Removing Henrietta Lacks

638 Words | 3 Pages

According to Henrietta, physicians at the Hopkins during the 1950s and early 1960s claimed to offer to treat African American patients but in contrary, they did so in a manner that showed segregation especially from the fellow white families. Another strategy to ensure that African Americans did not receive treatment in medical institutions is that there were education and language barrier. According to Skloot, these factors kept the backs away from these institutions unless they thought they had no choice, pg. 16.

Read More

Henrietta Lacks And Ethics

462 Words | 2 Pages

The origination of HeLa cells, used in biomedical research for a potential cure for cancer, had made many ground breaking discoveries in science; all thanks to one woman, Mrs. Henrietta Lacks. The history of Mrs. Lacks’s contribution to these studies raised many ethical issues concerning healthcare practice. In the short film, The Way of All Flesh, we learn how these cells were revealed by direct violation of ethical principles. During the 1950s, matters regarding informed consent practices were in their beginning stages of implementation.

Read More

Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Essay

919 Words | 4 Pages

In the case of Henrietta Lacks and her family, the mistreatment of doctors and lack of informed consent defined nearly 60 years of the family’s history. Henrietta Lacks and her children had little to no information about serious medical procedures and the use of Henrietta’s cells in research. Henrietta’s cells launched a multibillion-dollar industry without her consent and doctors even took advantage of her children’s lack of education to continue their research without questions: “[Doctor] did not explain why he was having someone draw blood from Deborah… he wrote a phone number and told her to use it for making more appointments to give more blood” (188). Deborah did not have the knowledge to understand the demands or requests the doctors made of her, and the doctors did not inform her explicitly.

Read More

More about The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

Related Topics

Open Document