The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

Robertson Davies, a Canadian novelist, once wrote, “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” We have the power to decipher between the images before us and convince ourselves that what we are seeing is truly what we make it out to be. In Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot tells the story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks with immortal cells. Henrietta’s cells were used for science and stirred up turbulent debates between scientists, doctors, politicians, civilians, and others. The ethical backing to the research and testing done with HeLa cells, the abbreviation for Henrietta’s immortal cells, was, and in some ways still is, the main topic concerning Henrietta’s cells. There are two main points

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. Skloot saw the importance of honoring who Henrietta was as a person not just wats he did for science. Skloot knew that the word needed to see who Henrietta was, not only as the woman behind the immortal cells, but a woman who impacted the lives of many around her: she said, “for me, its writing a book and telling people about this story.” Rebecca Skloot is stil pursing the hope of people knowing the backstory of Henrietta and how she made a difference in the world before her cells were even

Some family members still want to sue the people gaining money from HeLa, but others simply want people to see who Henrietta was (327-328). Deborah, Henrietta’s daughter, told Skloot, “Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different. (276)” So many advances have been made in science and medicine that the majority of people on the Earth have been affected by HeLa cells at least on time in their lives. Hopefully one day, when kids are taught in their biology classes about HeLa cells, they also learn about the importance in the history of the woman behind the