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The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot was published in 2010 and instantly became a New York Times bestseller. The book is a summary of Henrietta's life, including the medical history and issues with bioethical she faces. The book contains a lot of obvious issues with this topic that the reader can see instantly. Skloot does not come out directly and point them all out, as they were presented to the reader by telling the story with a violation of Henrietta's rights and tying bioethical issues within them. Henrietta Lacks’s life and human rights get violated throughout her lifetime due to bioethical issues, selfishness, and by others injecting her own cells into thousands of people without her knowledge and consent.
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The big problem was if they had informed Henrietta and her family, what would happen if they said no to the use of her cells? As you learn when you are reading, when the researchers found out that these specific cells can do many beneficial things for the world they did not turn this chance down. In the book, it states, “TeLinde often used patients from the public wards for research, usually without their knowledge. Many scientists believed that since patients were treated for free in the public wards, it was fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment . . . as Howard Jones once wrote, ‘Hopkins, with its large indigent black population, had no dearth of clinical material’ ”(Skloot 29). This explains the attitude of what scientists used to take cells from an individual without their consent or knowledge of one. If they said no, they could not continue to distribute the cells and save many people. They then proceeded to use her cells in different ways, disregarding the whole idea of how the family would feel if Henrietta’s cells were still in present use. In today's society, you would need permission to do anything in the medical field, however, these times were different, and Henrietta had no say in whatever the doctors wanted to do with her cells. Not only when they found out that the HeLa cells could be used to benefit things and started injecting them, they continued to do this as …show more content…

Selfishness is a major key point in this book. As mentioned above, Henrietta’s family did not find out until 25 years later about the use of her cells. You can tell that once the medical field found something that could benefit them with money, and business, they are going to take advantage of that. They hid a big thing that violated an individual's rights to benefit them. Them waiting 25 years to mention it to Henrietta’s family also gave them the opportunity to not have them take away the cells. This is because the time frame after was from so long ago that there was not going to be much evidence presented to prove them “guilty.” The laws were so different back then that cases such as this would be hard to prove. Overall, because of this time period, the medical field took advantage of an individual. Disregarding the time period, any medical field should not take any opportunity that makes them take advantage of one’s given human

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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.

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Not only would her cells be important, but also, these cancer cells would cause her family to go through many challenges. Though Henrietta’s might have not been and important person while being alive. She & her family live through her reproducing cancer cells that continue to create advancements in the medical field. Mrs. Lacks “showed up at Hopkins complaining

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is the biography of Henrietta Lacks, her children, and her cells, and the whole premise of the book is based on the injustice committed on them (Skloot). As explained in the book, the Lacks family have suffered great injustice from five angles; first, researchers collected cancer cell samples from Henrietta Lacks without receiving, or even requesting, consent, and tried growing them in the lab where they were found to be immortal (Skloot). Second, no one asked permission of the Lacks family to use the cells for research, or even notified anyone in the Lacks family that cells collected from Henrietta were still alive until 15 years later (Skloot). Third, after finally informing the Lacks family that Henrietta

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So, when they went to institutions for treatment they were often just seen as things that the doctors and scientists could tinker with. Skloot writes a bit on the Tuskegee syphilis study, which lead to white doctors abusing their patients for “research” and to later state “the news spread like pox spread through the black communities: doctors were doing research on black people lying to them, and watching them die (50). Skloot stated that when Henrietta went in for her cancer treatment, the doctor preforming the treatment did not even tell, nor ask her if she wanted to be a donor of cells, instead he just cut the samples from her cervix and sent them off (33). Had she been a white female going through the same treatment, the protocol would definitely have been different, the doctors would have gotten consent from the patient before doing anything of that nature. All of this adds together to show how Henrietta was objectified for the use of

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Multiple times throughout the book it was mentioned that Henrietta’s biopsy took place 60 years ago and a lot of changes have been made to science and ethics. This book did a good job bringing up ethics in science and scientific achievements that have been made over the years, but in some ways it was sensationalized to get the family the recognition they feel they deserved. As a poor, black family, the Lacks’ were discriminated against. Even the medical treatments they received were often not the best treatments offered and they were often experimented on. Having the fear of being mistreated and used for experimentation made the Lacks’ even more upset about Henrietta’s death.

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is at once a biography, a work of science journalism, and a book about the interconnected topics of ethics, justice, and racism. Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman who died from cervical cancer in 1951, was the source of the so-called HeLa cell line, which is “omnipresent” (Skloot, 2010, p. 24) in modern science. The HeLa cell line was derived from Henrietta Lacks’ cancerous tumor, which, against the wishes of Henrietta’s family was taken from her corpse and has been used for prolific and lucrative medical research for over seven decades (Skloot, 2010). Skloot (2010) described The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as “a biography of both the cells and the woman they came from—someone’s daughter, wife, and mother” (pp. 25-26). While the HeLa cells are ubiquitous in research, the woman from whom they came is, at best, a footnote in biological or medical textbooks.

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Henrietta Lacks’s daughter Deborah once stated “If our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?” (Skloot 9). The lack of ethics also points to another theme of Henrietta’s story, discoveries are more than the discovery itself, there are always people behind them. Deborah’s words also emphasize the human side

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When Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, she left her five children motherless and alone. This includes one of her two daughters, Deborah Lacks. Throughout her life, Deborah never was able to meet her mother and knew of her only as an idea- a woman who died soon after her birth. After Henrietta’s death, she faded into old news and was hardly ever talked about. Deborah only ever wanted to learn more about her mother, going as far as harassing her brother, Lawrence, until he broke down into tears.

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"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot is a captivating non-fiction book that explores the fascinating story of Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cancer cells were unknowingly taken and used for medical research without her consent in the 1950s. The book cover depicts a photograph of Henrietta Lacks herself, adding a personal touch to the story and emphasizing the importance of her life and legacy. Skloot's thorough research and poignant storytelling shed light on the complicated ethical issues surrounding medical research and the impact that Henrietta's cells, known as HeLa cells, have had on modern medicine. In "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," Rebecca Skloot masterfully tells the story of a woman

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This reading consisted of an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In this excerpt the author has visited the home of the living relatives of Henrietta. They show distaste and skepticism towards her due to her being white and asking questions about their mother, Henrietta Lacks. However they seem to warm up to her and tell her about what had happened to their mother. Henrietta awas a cancer patient, and when she died the doctors had asked permission to use her cells, on the premise that it would help prevent her children from dying from the same illness.

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Despite the wrongdoings Henrietta Lacks was put through her cells did a lot to help advance science. Her cells helped develop different types of vaccines, which such as her daughter faced. A lot of good and bad came out of Henrietta’s

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta, an African-American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line. Told through the eyes of her daughter, Deborah Lacks, aided by journalist Rebecca Skloot. Deborah wanted to learn about her mother, and to understand how the unauthorized harvesting of Lacks cancerous cells in 1951 led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs, changing countless lives and the face of medicine forever. It is a story of medical arrogance and triumph, race, poverty and deep friendship between the unlikeliest people. There had been many books published about Henrietta’s cells, but nothing about Henrietta’s personality, experiences, feeling, life style etc.

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Peter Strople once said, “Legacy is not something one leaves to people, it's something one leaves in people.” Henrietta Lacks’ legacy is her cells and how they helped hundreds of people. Henrieta Lacks is an African American woman who died from cervical cancer and her cancerous cells were taken from her without her consent. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot expresses the central issues of ethics and race through various literary devices. Henrietta’s story highlights the systemic racism and exploitation that has occurred in the medical field.

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Her doctor collected cancerous cells and healthy cells from her cervix and gave them to the cancer researcher, George Otto Gey, who was trying to keep cells alive for more than a couple days. Henrietta endured intense radium treatments, but she still died at the age of 31, leaving her husband and five children behind. An amazing discovery was made Henrietta’s cell were immortal. Racism is prevalent in this book through the limited availability of healthcare, unethical behaviors of the doctors, and how racism affected her family. During this time, there was an extensive lack of medical care for colored people.

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Bushra Pirzada Professor Swann Engh-302 October 4th 2015 Rhetorical Analysis: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot tells the story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks who has her cervical cancer. It further goes to tell the audience how Henrietta altered medicine unknowingly. Henrietta Lacks was initially diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951; however, the doctors at John Hopkins took sample tissues from her cervix without her permission. The sample tissues taken from Henrietta’s cervix were used to conduct scientific research as well as to develop vaccines in the suture.

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