Rebecca Skloot Essay

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

Henrietta Lacks was a normal, young African American woman who lived a simple life by taking care of her family, including her husband (and also her first cousin) Dale, and their five children. Not long after she delivered her fifth child, Henrietta developed an aggressive cervical cancer caused by the sexually transmitted disease, HPV, which quickly caused her to lose her fight and pass away, yet her death and cancer cells also had a new beginning in the aspect of science: her cells taken from a biopsy continued to divide and became one of the most important cell lines in medical history. In the aspect of her children, however, they had a new beginning to face without their mother, and that eventually lead them down the road of many medical illnesses and mental disorders.

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.

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

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.

Henrietta Lacks was a thirty-one year old African American who had five kids and married her cousin David Lacks. Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer, the doctors never informed Mrs. Lacks that her cells were to be tested on. The Lacks family was certainly not advised that Henrietta 's cells were growing at an incredible rate. Because of this, the cancer cells were shipped and bought across the world. The last 8 months of Henrietta’s death became a piece of history nobody would ever want to forget. Not only would her cells be important, but also, these cancer cells would cause her family to go through many challenges. Though Henrietta’s might have not been and important person while being alive. She & her family live through her reproducing cancer cells that continue to create advancements in the medical field.

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 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,

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot and examines the life of Henrietta Lacks and her peculiar situation with her mysterious cells. This paper will focus on chapter two in the novel and how it becomes the most important part of the book when it comes to understanding Henrietta’s life story. Chapter two is called “Clover (1920-1942)”, the chapter itself dissects the early life of Henrietta and the challenges she had growing up. In this chapter, it goes over the gender, economic, and racial obstacles that greatly impacted her. It is important to understand the socio-economic conditions that led Henrietta to be treated less than human.

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

In this work of nonfiction, Rebecca Skloot writes about the life of a woman that unknowingly supplied her cells to scientific research. Additionally, Skloot expresses issues such as race, scientific methods, class, and ethics, that were raised by the HeLa cells. The novel commences with a quote by Elie Wiesel from The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg code. The quote follows “ We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish and with some measure of triumph”. By judging the content of the quote, it is obvious that it serves as an indirect summary of contents the book contains-- the life of Henrietta, her adversities, triumphs,

To the untrained eye, a story could be viewed one-dimensionally; a tale might only appeal to emotion while logic is left out in the cold. Equally, logic may be forgotten while emotion is heavily focused on. However, through the use of Critical Lenses, readers can begin to see greater depth in literature. As readers find connections through Critical Lenses, they become more educated on various topics, more aware of social, political, and even logical abstractions. Instead of failing to retain the intent and content of the material, they even can remember details of stories more vividly when truly examining literature rather than reading it once for entertainment (or chore). Lenses help readers to focus in on literature in more specific ways, in turn, readers understand

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

in her article “the end of the college essay” Rebecca Schuman argues that college essays shouldn’t be used in required courses anymore. Schuman claims that “everybody in college hates papers” and that many students have trouble writing college essays either way therefore she feels there’s no need to have students write college papers.

The story, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, explores the true story of a woman named Deborah and her journey to discover more information about her mother and what her cells did for humanity. Deborah’s mother, Henrietta, died of cancer and her cells, which were attained by inhumane means, contributed greatly to the scientific study of curing other diseases. Although, Henrietta’s death also had a great impact on Deborah due to the fact that Deborah had to face certain difficult situations. With her passing, Deborah was forced to live with a cousin of her mother, who abused her and had a husband who also verbally and sexually mistreated her. The abuse is prominently shown when Galen, the husband, screams at Henrietta, “Get back here till I finish with you, Dale! You