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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.
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.
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 ,
In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot goes on a lengthy journey in order to uncover the past of one of the greatest advances in medical history. Through the process she discovered that there was more to the story than just one woman, and this would lead her on an international adventure to discover the truth. Throughout the book many issues are present, many of them are quite severe, these issues include abuse and racial issues. To begin, there are multiple forms of abuse that are present in the book, and these include types of abuse such as physical, emotional, sexual and even abuse of power. Deborah Lacks Was abused at a young age by a woman named Ethel.
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.
They had been trying to do this for awhile before the first one was created, so it was a very important event. The next big topic Skloot discussed was poverty. Money was tight in the Lacks family, especially since they had lots of health issues. When the Lacks family found out about the cells, they were extremely angered that people were making profit off of them, and they could not even get health insurance.
During my University 111 class, I was given the opportunity to read the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This read was connected to the most important medical breakthrough of the 20th century that changed the face of scientific research. This was the discovery of the numerous uses of cancerous cervical cells from a colored woman named Henrietta Lacks, to science she was HeLa. Her cells aided in the understanding of the development of AIDS/HIV treatment, the development of the polio vaccine, understanding the nutritional needs of cells, and stronger requirements of patient consent laws. To better understand the reading, the class was assigned a project that would allow us to make societal connections.
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.
This nonfiction book The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks was written by Rebecca Skloot. Skloot gives us a glimpse of the life of a young African American woman Henrietta Lacks as she briefly went through the healthcare system with cervical cancer in the 1950s. While Henrietta is the main character of this book, Skloot also highlighted the racial disparities in the healthcare sector and other industries at the time and painting a vivid picture of dying communities and the struggles of the descendants of Henrietta Lacks. Although, a lot of the book is about Henrietta Lacks, it is also about her daughter Deborah learning more about her mother and finding out the truth about her aunt Elsie. Henrietta was a mother of five who sort medical attention
In the reading of Skloot, the big issue is the taking of Henrietta’s cells without her or family’s knowledge which is a violation of something very important and secret to Americans. The right to privacy is so important because a patient needs to know that a hospital, doctor, and nurse can be trusted with their medical information whether it is a small medical issue, or something major and embarrassing. You want to know that that information is not going to be out for the world to know or that information is going to be used somewhere else without your knowledge. In Provision 1 of the Guide to the Code of Ethics for Nurses, it is stated that “worth or value that people have simply because they are human not by virtue of any social standing, ability to evoke admiration, or any particular set of talents, skills, or powers.” (Flower, pp.8)
Skloot works hard throughout her time with Deborah to reiterate what her goals are: Letting the world learn the history of HeLa cells and Henrietta herself. At a later point during their research, Deborah begins interrogating Skloot with the same questions she has asked several times before which stem from her inability to trust others. She wants to make sure Skloot would not reveal certain personal information they gathered. All because of a smile on Skloot’s face, Deborah is triggered and begins asking ‘“Who you working for?”’ and proclaiming ‘“You’re lying!”’ (283)
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.
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
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.
This is not only informative, it also strengthens the ethos by proving the author is knowledgeable and supporting the first person experiences of the novel. Instead of stating “this is the family of the patient,” the author uses personal experiences and specific facts to characterize all members explicitly (Skloot 273). The details and experiences are connected by and transitioned with the shifting point of view. Although Skloot was an important character, her main purpose was to report and tell “everybody in the world about [Henrietta Lacks]” (Skloot 206). As a result, the third person is more prevalent than the first person aspects of the novel.
