The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

Many of the concepts we have learned this semester are used in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot. They are cells, mitosis, viruses, lab safety, and even the scientific method. The book is based on cells so there are many times when it talks about them. There is a time when a person sees a cell going through mitosis and meiosis. The cells in the book are taken from a woman with cancer. These cells become immortal. Scientists use these cells to find out how to treat many viruses. Finally, the book includes the stories of many scientists and their experiments with these cells, and scientists use the scientific method when they are doing an experiment. All of these concepts are seen somewhere in the book.
Key Idea 1
Cells

This includes finding ways to fight many types of viruses. For example, in chapter 13, it talks about how Henrietta’s cells were used to help fight the polio virus. It was discovered that Henrietta’s cells were susceptible to the polio virus so they were shipped to many researchers. With the cells, scientists were able to prove the Salk vaccine effective (Skloot, Location 1558-1585). Because Henrietta’s cells were immortal and of how the cells did with polio, scientists began to expose them to all kinds of viruses. These viruses include the following: herpes, measles, fowl pox, mumps, and equine encephalitis. It was said that Henrietta’s cells helped launch the field of virology. The book also mentions how viruses reproduce by injecting some of their genetic material into a living cell, essentially reprogramming the living cell so it reproduces the virus instead of itself which is a concept we have learned this semester (Skloot, Location

The scientific method includes the following steps: asking a question, do research, make a hypothesis, test your hypothesis by doing an experiment, analyze your data, draw a conclusion, and share your results. In this book, many scientists are mentioned. Some of the scientists mentioned are doing experiments on Henrietta’s cells. For example, George Gey and William Scherer did an experiment on Henrietta’s cells to test how they reacted to the polio virus (Skloot, Location 1553). They, like all other scientists, used the scientific method in order to do this. They wondered if Henrietta’s cells were susceptible to polio. They did think that they were so they tested this hypothesis by infecting Henrietta’s cells with the polio virus. The experiment proved that Henrietta’s cells were susceptible to polio so they sent them to researchers all around the