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The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

631 Words3 Pages

The Problems African Americans Faced

The racial segergation and persecution that African American’s faced were truly unforgetable. With the complete abolishment of slavery colored people still face racial persucation all through out the 1900’s. The family that was hugly impacted were the Lacks. “In The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks”, the main role in the book was Henrietta the mother of five kids who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the time. The docters did many test’s on Henrietta which are now illigal to proceed on someone. In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot , African Americans were racialy segergated , tested on without consent, and how the lack of education effected African Americans because it allowed them to get taken advantage of. …show more content…

There were different colored sections for balcks and whites at the time becuase racism was still huge. For Henrietta’s case she had to visit the only hospitals of many that allowed colored patients but they were still put in different wards the John Hopkins hospital.”She, like most black patients, only went to Hopkins when she thought she had no choice”(Chapter 1). Going to hospitals for black people at the time of the Jim Crow laws were very harsh becuase of all the racial segergation that they had to go through. But Henrietta felt that she had a knot type feeling inside of her was forced to head to the hospital to where docters had to try to cure her with “Radium” to help her cervical cancer. “Lord it just feels the blacknees is spreading inside me”(Chapter 1). The medicine that was used to help her clear her cancer was very tough and wasnt used on that much people but the docters werent complaning to get some extra research on a black

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Henrietta then gets treated for her cancer, and is treated like any other woman with cervical cancer at the time with a form of primitive cancer treatment. In surgery, the doctor would put a tube full of radium in and around Henrietta’s cervix and vagina and let it sit there for some time, and took some samples from her vagina and tumor. While results were promising for some time, Henrietta’s tumor came back with a vengeance. The tumors blocked her urethra and “nearly replaced her kidney’s bladder, ovaries, and uterus” (90). Her pain was so great that even strong pain killers like morphine and pure alcohol injected

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There are many reasons for this; because the cells weren’t ‘part of” Henrietta anymore so it shouldn’t matter whether the doctors did what they did or not. The problem however, is that Henrietta was not informed on any of this and were not given a real opportunity to give ‘informed consent’ about her cells and tissues on her body. Because of the pressure that they felt from the doctors, they were vulnerable. They weren’t told that tissues were taken from her body, and now, these cells and tissues made many people other than the Lacks family rich, when the Lacks family still struggled to keep their heads above water and to just make it by. “The biggest payday any of the Lacks children ever saw...Day got a check for $12,000 and gave $2,000 to each of his children” (Skloot 208).

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Throughout the Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, she described her investigation into the life of Henrietta Lacks, her immortal cell line, the ethical violations surrounding her case, as well as the major contributions to modern medicine and research her case provided. During the time of Henrietta’s treatment, both medical and research ethics were quite different; many values such as autonomy, justice, and beneficence were not as enforced, and were applied differently throughout different institutions and individuals of different demographics. Though investigating her case and other important cases surrounding the use of HeLa cells, Skloot acknowledges the unethical circumstances which filled Henrietta’s case and

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After her death in 1951, for six decades, the name Henrietta Lacks was not a recognized name in the eyes of the society, but cells containing her DNA did. HeLa Cells are the first immortal human cells, cancerous cells taken from Henrietta’s cervix never die, in fact they multiply every twenty-four hours. After spending 10 years to perfect her first book, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot encapsulated the life, the death, and aftermath of Henrietta Lacks’ life. Throughout her book, Rebecca Skloot takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through the lens of the Lacks family, dealing with controversial issues regarding science, ethics, race, and class. The journey of the Lacks families started in Henrietta’s hometown Clover, Virginia then progressed to the “colored” ward of

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The immortal cells from her ultimately fatal cervical carcinoma were taken without her knowledge or consent by white doctors in the segregated ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital. It wasn’t until the 1970s that her family members found out that their wife and mother’s cells were alive in laboratories all around the world or that biotech companies had made millions of dollars selling vials of HeLa cells while most of the Lacks family lived in poverty and often couldn’t afford health insurance or medical care . In this story and much of the discussion it has prompted, I find an unsatisfactory engagement with the aforementioned entanglement of race, gender, class and sexuality. It is this intersectional assemblage that I will grapple with in this

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Eventually her invasive cancer began to spread everywhere and soon the doctors began to do radiation therapy on her. On a side note, Henrietta probably wouldn’t have done this treatment knowingly if it would prevent her from having more children. The radiation treatment didn’t fare well for Henrietta. It made her skin black to the point it was darker than shadows. The disease worsen to the point where that Henrietta was in constant pain and could no longer perform basic task.

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Many times throughout history, morality and ethics have been compromised. People have always questioned the “unwritten laws” of what is deemed ethically correct and what isn’t. In the medical world, there was a discovery that allowed for many new accomplishments and unlocked the potential of modern-day medicine. In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author, Rebecca Skloot, explores the life of a very important woman in modern science. Her immortal cells revolutionized the medical field and led to the growth of a multimillion-dollar industry.

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was published 2010, written by a journalist named Rebecka Skloot. Skoolt had a slight obsession with Henrietta’s life and from this came one of the best books I’ve read in years. In this novel, Rebecka documents the life, death and afterlife of Mrs. Henrietta Lacks. An African America woman who unknowingly handed over her cells to science and practically saved the world we know today. It all started with a flashback from the first time Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins hospital January 29th in 1951.

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In her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot reveals how Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman diagnosed with cervical cancer, was exploited by the medical community for the development of the immortal “HeLa” cells that have since become the most widely used cells for medical research and advancement from the 20th century to the present day. The HeLa cells have since led to the formulation of the polio vaccination along with groundbreaking research on diseases such as AIDS, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and possible treatments for various forms of cancer in humans (Zielinski). However, this breach of medical ethics in regards to removing Lacks’ cervical cells without her knowledge or consent has led to questions

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Henrietta’s story should be viewed as one that has helped countless people around the world, not one of race and

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I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot for the first time in high school for a summer reading assignment I was rushing to complete the last week of summer break. Four years later, I chose to read this book again because I now have an interest in biochemistry, in particular a goal to study antiviral agents in the hopes of a Hepatitis B cure. This time around, I understood the significance this book had because it revealed details of the racist treatment of African Americas that are intertwined with the hidden truths and hypocritical acts of the medical system that unfortunately still exist. On October 4, 1951 Henrietta Lacks died from cervical cancer at the young age of 31.

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Henrietta Lacks was a black tobacco farmer from the south who, in 1950, at the age of 30, she was diagnosed with aggressive cervical cancer. Lacks went to John’s Hopkins medical center for treatment for her cancer. In April of 1951, she underwent surgery to remove the larger tumor on her cervix. Henrietta Lacks, died three days following the surgery. Even though Henrietta Lacks died, her cells from the tumor have lived on and have made a major impact on the biomedical community.

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In the reading of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, the author Rebecca Skloot makes it well known that Henrietta Lacks, while a patient at John Hopkins Hospital samples of her cells was taken from her without her or her family’s knowledge or consent. We are made aware of this on page 33 “though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting samples or asked if she wanted to be a donor — Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta’s cervix”. As a health professional, you are violating that patients’ rights and in this case the Lacks right to privacy were violated. The way that the lacks family’s right to privacy was the fact that Henrietta’s cells often referred to as the HeLa cells

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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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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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