The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

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. Scientists and doctors made great discoveries with the HeLa cells of Henrietta Lacks. The family of Henrietta Lacks had to live with the aftermath of decisions made by doctors and

Written by the great Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon is where the song of African- Americans is sung with the most genuine and sincere voice in utmost entirety. In this essay, the masterpiece will be examined with gender studies approach and cultural studies approach, the function of Pilate and Ruth would be examined in depth, the suggestion that the protagonist should be more loving and caring for others would be fully explained, and the value of this book will be carefully examined.

In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, education plays a substantial role in what occurs throughout the book. Many major events are related to people not understanding what is happening to them. Skloot brings up the topic ’Lack of Education,’ frequently and this affected Henrietta's treatments, and how her family viewed the situation, and how the black community viewed scientist overall.

57% of all women are in the fields of science. (Mattern 8). Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, intrigued women of all ages to become engineers, doctors, science teachers, and so much more. Men used to be the only people to tackle careers in this field. However, Ride changed the world when she became the first American woman in space. She was extremely supportive of achieving equal rights for women and encouraged little girls to enter the fields of science. In fact, because of Sally Ride’s science experiments, life is more convenient here on Earth. Because of Sally Ride’s perseverance in life, she is known as a hero of change, and her legacy as America’s Space Girl lives on.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book written by Rebecca Skloot. Chapter 1 begins shortly after Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, and her son, Joe, were born. After those two were born, she then began to experience vaginal bleeding at the wrong time of the month. Feeling like something was wrong, Henrietta rushed to the doctor. She only went to see the doctor “If she felt she had no other choice”. She rushed to the Gynecologist, Howard Jones. For him only tot reveal that she had a cervical tumor. In 1951, Howard and his boss, Richard Wesley Telinde, were working hard to develop and improve methods for treating cervical cancer. With insufficient methods to gather information about the cancer, a number of women were accidently diagnosed with cervical cancer. Telinde wanted to improve treatment and diagnosis of cervical cancer, so he took tissue samples from Jones’ patients. Growing healthy and cancerous Samples of cervical tissue. They ended up taking Henrietta’s samples, but his coworkers were sure they would die altogether. After the procedure, Henretta Returned home and resumed her normal life once again. Her family had no idea she was sick. Henretta kept her sickness a secret,

Rebecca Skloot develops the idea that poverty comes with many difficult situations, in the book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks". True, Henrietta and her family were poor, could barely afford their medical bills, and they didn 't get the extended care that they deserved. You will learn how being poor can change your life and what is done with it .

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. The cells that came from Henrietta Lack’s tumor were extremely strange, normal cells go through something called apoptosis, programed cell death, the cells from Lack’s tumor did not go through this process and continued to divided continually. Doctors and lab pathologists

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.

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. This caught Rebecca’s

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. 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.

How can you take cells from a human being and treat them as clothes that you’re just selling. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot told the story of the woman behind the famous cell line and the fact that her family did not know about Lacks’ immortal cells until more than 20 years after her death. Some believe it was legal to take Mrs. Lacks cells, while others disagree and say it’s illegal. It was definitely illegal for the doctors and scientist to take Henrietta’s cells without her consent. Taking cells was not a part of her surgical procedure. Henrietta was a human being that should have been treated with respect. But mainly, George Gey treated her with everything but that. Taking 20+ years to tell her children

She repetitively discusses the process she went through in order to get an interview with Henrietta’s family and friends, more specifically with Deborah. Not only does she personally interviews family member and friends but she also discusses HeLa cells and other essential information by finding credible sources. For example, “According to Judith Greenburg, director of the Division of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the National Institute of General Medical Science, the NIH now has “very stringent guidelines” requiring consent for any tissues collected for their banks.” (Skloot 318) She cites scholarly articles and credible sources to establish her knowledge in the subject before writing a novel about Henrietta’s life, as well as to show the readers the credibility of her sources. This particular act conveys to the reader that Skloot wanted to be concise and precise while informing the audience about Henrietta’s

Family, for most people, is defined as a sort of safe haven for people to go to. For others, families may be fragmented, split, or may have wrong ideals as a whole. Broken families, while they may have a long lasting effect on the spouses, can also have a detrimental, long-lasting effect on the children of these marriages which can lead to certain mental illnesses. For example, in the story of the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Deborah faces the emotional effects of her mother’s death. Other stories such as “A Rose for Emily”, show how Emily 's fathers parenting techniques and a lack of a mother figure burdened her future. Into the Wild explores the emptiness of love which affects the life choices of a man named Chris. All of these situations

Nonetheless, the consequences of this perspective is normal people like you and me are perceived to see Henrietta Lacks and her family as an object in a museum. The consequences of this could be disrespecting the family like many other writers and scientific researchers did many times before Rebecca Skloot. They saw Henrietta Lacks and her family as a road side-show because of how the family was perceived and privacy of the family was put in danger as a result of the consequences given on how the media and scientific community saw Henrietta Lacks and the Lacks family. Thereafter, Rebecca Skloot conducted herself in a different way she tried to get to know the family. She was actually interested in the story of Henrietta Lacks and her family. Rebecca conducted herself manner were she respect the family and their values. In the book you can see how Rebecca wrote the story on the side of the family to show their side of the story and how she just didn’t care about the HeLa cells but what was Henrietta Lacks and her family’s backstory and how HeLa came to be and what was life like for them. In conclusion, I believe Rebecca Skloot was different in her research and how she wrote her book compared to how the scientific community and media shared and wrote about Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells

Part two of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, once again submerges the reader in to the world of HeLa cells. This section emphasizes what occurred with Henrietta’s immortal cells after her death. Along with the many medical discoveries made from these miracle cells, part two delves into the physical and emotional abuse that Henrietta’s children were forced to live with after her passing all while struggling financially while their mother’s cells are being sold for millions of dollars. Skloot continues her phenomenal synopsis of the life of Henrietta Lacks and the stories her cells continue to tell.