The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Essay

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is at once a biography, a work of science journalism, and a book about the interconnected topics of ethics, justice, and racism. Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman who died from cervical cancer in 1951, was the source of the so-called HeLa cell line, which is “omnipresent” (Skloot, 2010, p. 24) in modern science. The HeLa cell line was derived from Henrietta Lacks’ cancerous tumor, which, against the wishes of Henrietta’s family was taken from her corpse and has been used for prolific and lucrative medical research for over seven decades (Skloot, 2010).
Skloot (2010) described The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as “a biography of both the cells and the woman they came from—someone’s daughter, wife, and mother” (pp. 25-26). While the HeLa cells are ubiquitous in research, the woman from whom they came is, at best, a footnote in biological or medical textbooks. One of the ironies explored in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is the dichotomy between the vast value of the HeLa cell line—which has been used in the development of the polio vaccine, nuclear bomb testing, the

Doctors first asked him for autopsy permission over the phone, bur Day refused. Later, when Day visited the hospitals, doctors once again asked him for autopsy permission, explaining that an autopsy would result in the accumulation of knowledge that would help others. This time, Day gave his permission, but not according to the contemporary standards of informed consent. Doctors did not specify that they were planning far more than an autopsy; they were planning to remove more of Henrietta’s cancerous cells and turn them into an immortal cell line for ongoing scientific research. While it is possible that Day might have supported this plan, it was never explained to him in terms that he could understand and reliably give his consent