ipl-logo

Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

615 Words3 Pages

Science and ethics have been colliding back and forth for centuries. Science want to discover new technologies to help people and for other selfish reason. People want medical help to save their loved ones. Many times scientists have sacrificed the good of a few for the needs of many.In Rebecca Skloot's modern day investigative biography The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot uses Pathos to develop the themes of immorality and unethical behavior of medical science.

The first medical code requiring patient consent was the Nuremberg code which was "revolutionary”(Skloot). Voluntary human consent to experimentation is " absolutely necessary” (Skloot). Authors convey emotion with deliberate and thought out word choice word choice. Rebecca Skloot instill emotion with her readers when she told them of how in 1947 humans were getting their rights in medicine for the first time. Skloot used the emotions form the inability to trust our doctors to better understand the fear of doctors that lived in the black community. Bluntly …show more content…

According to newspapers at that time,“the Nuremberg Code didn’t seem to apply to the United States”(Skloot 133). It was unsettling to many at that time that American doctors felt above the rules. this allowed Skloot to emphasise our emotions of fear of doctors above the law and what the could have done. In the modern world one should have not feared the men who were supposed to heal them. One example of doctors who felt above the law was Dr. TeLinde. Doctor TeLinde often: “used patients from the public wards for research, usually without their knowledge”(Skloot 29). Many poor citizens in the 40’s and 50’s feared doctors and apparently for good reason. Skloot uses words like often to show that unconsented experimentation was common practice and stirred up our emotions again of the fear of doctors without restrictions of on whom they could

Show More
Related

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    244 Words  | 1 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Immortal Cells: Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    386 Words  | 2 Pages

    This led to major breakthroughs in the medical world and allowed scientists to experiment effects of toxins and cures. “If the whole profession is doing it, how can you call it 'unprofessional conduct'?" (Skloot, 134) Skloot wrote this book to unveil the injustices that the Lacks family and many other African-Americans went through. The key passage shows that many medical professionals used the “everyone else is doing it” defense to justify their unethical behavior.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    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 ,

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    983 Words  | 4 Pages

    Skloots book goes on to expose the unscrupulous way the hospital treated the family, and also shows it might not have been just them. What the world was told to know was the outbreak of the precious tumor cells that would help with sicknesses and mend the families being torn. Without the founding of

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    1263 Words  | 6 Pages

    TIC673 HeLa Assignment 2018 In one of the best seller novel, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” the author Rebecca Skloot describes about the first human immortal cells that lived in laboratory culture and about the story of black, 31-year-old woman from whom these cells were obtained. The cells which not only proved to be most important in the field of medicine but also brought medical revolution were obtained from her without her or her family’s knowledge leading to the most debatable ethical issues. The following essay would describe the cell’s contribution to science, how they were obtained and some of the ethical issues violated. Henrietta’s cells did much good for the society.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    1263 Words  | 6 Pages

    Devon Moore Professor Dunbar English 111 19 September 2017 Title Cells that are known as HeLa are a line of immortal human cells that were developed from an African American woman in the 1950’s. They continue to be very well-known to the world of science today as they are still used. The HeLa cells are known for contributing to a lot of medical advancements. Scientists have now converted these cells into drugs to help create many different treatments for various cancers and diseases.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    484 Words  | 2 Pages

    Since the 2010 release of Rebecca Skloot’s New York Times bestselling non-fiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many people both in and outside the scientific community are at least aware of the story of Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells . The almost-mythical tale of the immortal HeLa cell line, taken from Henrietta Lacks’s cancer-ridden cervix and grown in culture for more than sixty years now, has evolved and spread throughout the scientific and popular imaginary , surfacing in accounts of the miraculous power and possibility of scientific research and debates surrounding medical ethics . While HeLa was used to develop the polio vaccine, continues to be of use in the research of AIDS, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease, and a host of other medical conditions, and even sent up in the first space missions to test the conditions of human cells in zero gravity, the cell line also carries with it the history of the woman in whom it originated, the history of slavery and racism in America, and the entanglement of race, gender, class, and sexuality in the sciences.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    1480 Words  | 6 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    672 Words  | 3 Pages

    Skloot continues to use tone to develop the central idea. The chapter, "Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable" from Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, states "But Southam wasn't their doctor, and he wasn't withholding upsetting health information. The deception was for his benefit - he was withholding information because patients might have refused to participate in his study if they'd known what he was injecting. " This shows that Skloot has a negative attitude toward the subject.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    1096 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the reading of Skloot, the big issue is the taking of Henrietta’s cells without her or family’s knowledge which is a violation of something very important and secret to Americans. The right to privacy is so important because a patient needs to know that a hospital, doctor, and nurse can be trusted with their medical information whether it is a small medical issue, or something major and embarrassing. You want to know that that information is not going to be out for the world to know or that information is going to be used somewhere else without your knowledge. In Provision 1 of the Guide to the Code of Ethics for Nurses, it is stated that “worth or value that people have simply because they are human not by virtue of any social standing, ability to evoke admiration, or any particular set of talents, skills, or powers.” (Flower, pp.8)

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Essay

    1329 Words  | 6 Pages

    Though racial discrimination and unethical medical practices are the main themes of the book, Skloot actually also hints readers about some important concepts from medical sociology. One example would be how class position, social location, social practices and condition, discrimination and poverty proves the link with social determinants of health. In the book, Skloot mentioned that the Lackes are poor and

    Read More

  • Why Is Henrietta Lacks Unethical

    1416 Words  | 6 Pages

    One of the most fundamental trust relationships is between a patient and their doctor. Physicians have supposedly earned their trustworthy title because of their extended education and desire to help others. However, this perception is being shattered by physicians violating patients’ trust by not providing all the information needed for making a responsible decision for a person’s health and performing unimaginable procedures. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” provides multiple examples of the unethical practice of doctors. When scientists do not recognize their subjects as human beings and their relationship results in an unbalanced power dynamic, their advantageous position often leads to the unethical treatments of subjects, especially

    Read More

  • Medical Heretics During The 1960's

    262 Words  | 2 Pages

    “During the 1960 election campaign, the medical profession spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to defeat the party that proposed the medical care plan. A key-man system was set up, and each key men was responsible for a small cell of doctors. Plans were passed from the hierarchy and its hired public relations experts to the key men and then down to the troops manning the barricades. Potential medical heretics were excluded from the communications systems, and if they held positions on any committees of the profession, they were purged.” (Badgley, R., & Wolfe, S., 1965)

    Read More

  • Henrietta Lacks And Ethics

    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.

    Read More

  • Movie Analysis: Something The Lord Made '

    727 Words  | 3 Pages

    During it 's two hour runtime it depicts the both the hardships of pioneering in uncharted territories of medicine as well as the racial discrimination and segregation of America in the 40s. It is a mirror of both great capacity for good and progress as well as inhumane detachment from one another based on race such as with Vivian Thomas or even gender such as with Dr. Helen Taussig. The struggle to advance the discipline of medicine with all cost and at the same time bringing us closer together as human beings under the same purpose no matter the differences is worthy of discussing. The ethical dilemmas depicted on the movie can be divided in two categories; social and medical.

    Read More

More about Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

Open Document