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The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

930 Words4 Pages

At times, doctors have to choose between the preservation and honor of a patient's dignity or to break ethical guidelines to help the human races’ health. A doctor who puts his patients’ well-being as his priority, usually respects the patient’s wishes. However, many factors influence a person’s decision to conduct an unethical experiment. In the contemporary biography, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot shows that scientists constantly discover and develop new concepts and procedures that help heal numerous people, despite the unethical experiments that they conduct on living organisms. Firstly, the opinion of one person can make up the opinion of another person. Humans naturally follow a leader, so one person’s choice can …show more content…

Many doctors who worked with either Henrietta or her cells like Gey, Southam, Mandel, TeLinde, and Kubicek conducted or assisted with unethical experiments. They choose to. Some of these successful medical experts studied at John Hopkins, the best medical institution in the America, and had high positions in respected medical organizations. However, because no one knew much about immortal cells, every medical scientist raced to see who could develop or discover the next big things for medical history. To have their names written down and remembered forever, made the risk worth the …show more content…

Scientists and doctors would not know the techniques and knowledge with only the use of cadavers or other organisms. Without all of the inhumane studies, many diseases that people die from today might not have treatments. Lengauer used Hela cells to help develop “fluorescent in situ hybridization” which after shown under an ultraviolet light, produced “a beautiful mosaic of colored chromosomes” (234). Skloot creates examples of how people do not cherish something, at times, because they do not fully know or fully comprehend the subject. Just like the reader can judge the doctors for their choice to conduct unethical experiments, just like the white people judge the black people because of their skin color, and just like how people dismiss science as a boring subject, until they take the time to understand it. They realize things that they had dismissed

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a novel written by Rebecca Skloot, a science reporter, depicting the lives of Henrietta Lacks’s family and their connection between them and Henrietta’s famous cancer cells “HeLa Cells”. Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951 and was treated with radium and radiation therapy. During her treatment process, the tumor and other cancerous tissue that was removed from her body was sent George Gey's lab at Hopkins to be grown in test tubes all without Lacks’s consent or knowledge. The cells were successfully able to divide and give the scientific community a good supply of human cancer cells to experiment on. The Lacks’s family was never informed about the cells even when there were amazing

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When removed during her biopsy and then cultured without her permission, her cells began to reproduce rapidly and require more and more culture medium to consume as they grew. They thrived in the lab and they were the first human cells ever in history to do so. Meanwhile, Henrietta, 31, African-American, and a mother of five, continued enduring painful and damaging radiation treatment in the hospital’s “colored only” ward. After Henrietta’s death, her cells, named HeLa after the first two letters of both her names, went on to become a celebrity of virology, benefiting more people than will ever be truly realized. Scientists have grown about 50 million metric tons of her cells, helped sustain and build thousands of careers, and tens of thousands of scientific

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535 Words | 3 Pages

Having the opportunity to discuss the impact of medical research performed on Henrietta Lacks’ cells with doctor George Guy would be an experience like no other. Through the use of Henrietta Lacks’s cells, George Guy created an industry that would fuel research throughout the scientific community. When Henrietta Lacks was admitted to the hospital for radiation treatments, doctors took samples of her cervical cancer cells. Henrietta was not informed that one of the two samples was sent to George Guy, a scientist researching the immortalization of human cells. Guy soon realized that these cells were able to grow outside of the human body, they even grew rapidly.

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522 Words | 3 Pages

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 ,

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734 Words | 3 Pages

“Participation by individuals capable of giving informed consent as subjects in medical research must be voluntary” (Ethics in Medical Research and Publication 2). This was a clear violation in ethics by taking Henrietta’s cells, but at the time racism was still alive and the doctors were a lot less ethical considering all the ethical violations in the medical field happening at this time. The HeLa cell line developed from her cells was estimated at a whopping 3 billion dollars, and none goes to the family. The family is struggling to afford their own medical care while companies are still profiting off their mother. Even with all this hardship put on the family some good has come out of this malicious act such as when HeLa cells were used to test vaccines for polio saving millions or when telomerase ,an enzyme used to fix DNA, allowed scientists to test anti-cancerous drugs that would have killed normal cells (Popular Science, pars.

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983 Words | 4 Pages

Hela cells. Not necessarily the cells themselves has changed anything, but the person they were taken from; Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whom was born August 1, 1920. Before passing on October 4, 1951, Henrietta approached Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, trying to find out what was bringing her awful abnormal pains and abdominal bleeding: soon after she was diagnosed with Cervical Cancer and treated with radium and x-ray therapy. During one particular visit tissue samples were taken from Henrietta while being ‘treated’ for her cancer and studied. Rebecca Skloot wrote, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, bringing to light the ‘complex social issues’ and ‘ethical dilemmas’ that entwined with HeLa cells and medical research.

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672 Words | 3 Pages

Skloot's attitude toward the subject is revealed through her word choice. The chapter, "Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable" from Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, states "He told them he was testing their immune systems; he said nothing about injecting them with someone else's malignant cells. " Skloot's choice of the word 'malignant' shows that she feels that Southam is harming innocent people. At first, the audience might feel that Southam is using safe cells to help the patients. The word choice helps the reader understand that the cells Southam is using on his patients are in fact not obliging.

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951 Words | 4 Pages

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, starts out as just the story of how Henrietta lived. Throughout the novel, the author lists everything that the Lacks family went through in life. Rebecca Skloot made sure o include in the novel the exact details that the family experienced as well as what Henrietta herself experienced. Rebecca was sure to tell the story on Henrietta Lacks as the author just wanted to know more about Henrietta. In order for the author to do that she had to do her research to get all the information.

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1459 Words | 6 Pages

Patient care is based around the individual- their best interest, treatment, and health concerns. Research is based around furthering knowledge within the medical world, by testing on people, and improving lives for future patients. In Henrietta’s case, she went to John Hopkins with the plan of being treated as a patient only, and was used for research, without education or consent. Making only a small effort to relieve her pain through radiation treatment, the physicians removed cells from Henrietta’s cervix to use in later studies. There is another line blurred, as Spigner, a University of Washington professor makes a point, stating, “The life and death of Henrietta Lacks is a cautionary tale that reflects the inherent contradiction between the stated purpose of medical research to provide benefit to humankind and the reality of blatant profiteering in the name of the advancement of science” (12).

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1099 Words | 5 Pages

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the main character Henrietta Lacks died from cervical cancer in 1951. Fortunately a few months before she died, her doctor took a little sample of her cancerous cells. This is important because this was the first and most important types of human cells ever to live and produce endlessly. She is famous because her cells helped out scientists all over to make some of the most valuable discoveries in up to date medical history. The bad news about this was her cells were taken without any of her consent.

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743 Words | 3 Pages

Racism in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Imagine your mother, sister, wife, or cousin was diagnosed with cervical cancer and you believed the doctors were doing everything in their power to help her. Only later you discovered her cells were used for research without consent and she was not properly informed of the risks of her treatment due to her race. This story happened and is told by Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Skloot use of narrative and her writing style enhances the understanding of the story. Henrietta Lacks was a young black woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at John Hopkins Hospital.

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988 Words | 4 Pages

Researchers believed that the person behind the cell line HeLa, was Helen Lane. After the death of George Gey, it was later discovered that the real name behind the cells was in fact Henrietta Lacks. As the discovery of the name Henrietta Lacks, researchers by the name of Susan Hsu and Victor McKsick began contacting the Lacks family under the misconception of they wanted to test them to be sure they did not have the cancer their mother had. Throughout the further research of Deborah, Henrietta’s daughter, they began requesting more blood for extended research that she was unaware of. They wanted more blood for a researcher in California who requisitioned samples of blood for his research on HeLa.

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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.

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Many students struggle with the same question: When will I ever use this in the real world? They spend the formative years of their lives learning information that molds them in a way that just doesn’t end up sticking. Most humans won’t need to differentiate between strong and weak bases on a daily basis but everyone reads. A skill we began learning in kindergarten might just be the most important skill we learn in school. Reading opens our eyes to new worlds and new opportunities.

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An essential part of modern society relied on trust, especially the trust of doctors and scientists. People had the right to make an informed decision about their bodies and body parts. People had a right to their body parts, both attached and cell samples collected by doctors. The actions that the medical professions made will continue to affect future generations in both positive and negative ways. In the contemporary biographical novel, the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot used logical opinions to argue about the importance of consent to reveal the lack of morality from those in the medical field which continues to persist today.

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