The book that I read was the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, about a black women who’s cells taken from a tumor in her cervix divides at a high rate. This is huge because Henrietta’s cells divided and didn’t die, unlike all of the other samples taken by the doctor. The author Rebecca Skloot is part of the story and becomes a friend of the remaining Lacks’, interviewing them about Henrietta. The main point of the book is the science behind the cells. Throughout the book, many discoveries happen such as the polio vaccine and testing is done because there is an unlimited amount of cells. The scientist that took the cells from Henrietta distributed them to the world and today they are still growing. The book shows triumph and failure, which is part of life.
The first of four views in the book is Henrietta’s life and family. Henrietta was a black woman born August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. She had her first child when she was 14 with her cousin Day. She then has a baby girl and then married when she was 18 on April 10, 1941. It all started after Henrietta’s fifth child was born when Henrietta said that she felt a knot inside of her womb. Her friends said it was just her baby, but Henrietta knew it wasn’t. She decided to go to the hospital and had a biopsy taken of a lump the size of a nickel in her cervix. She ended up being right; finding out that she had cervical cancer. Back then radium was used to treat cancer so they put a radium tube in and sent her home. While all of this was going on, Henrietta took her mentally challenged daughter to a mental institute hoping she’ll have a better life with more care. Henrietta then started receiving spot radiation treatments to try to get rid of the cancer. Her skin started to char af...
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...hole cross animal-human got out to the public, it wasn’t accepted. There was a STRONG pubic negative response. Contamination became a bigger problem and more questions arose from this. George Gey was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer and died soon after. An article about Gey was published and this was the first attribute to Henrietta. Her real name finally came out! Many investigators and scientists tried to contact the family to learn more information. After a big debate, it was figured that John Hopkins had stolen Henrietta’s cells and owed the family millions of dollars. Many tests had been performed and the cell eventually kept “transforming” over the years. It still replicated thought. BBC made a documentary about Henrietta. Today there are still debates over cell testing and samples from people. HeLa continues to grow today and probably will forever.
The family first heard that Henrietta’s cells were alive and being sent around the world, twenty-two years after Henrietta’s death. After discovering that Henrietta’s cells were in circulation, the family began to blame John Hopkins for taking Henrietta’s cells without permission and commercializing the cells to make multi-million dollar industry, while her family was living in poverty without health insurance. The John Hopkins Hospital has made various statements stating that the hospital never received funds for the HeLa cells specifying that Gey donated all of his HeLa cells samples to fellow researchers. Therefore, the sole benefactors of the HeLa cells profits are the biotechnology companies, which sell vials of HeLa cells for up to ten thousand
The scientific community saw Henrietta as nothing but a test subject before and after her death. During her first cancer treatment, nurses lead Henrietta to the “colored ward” where, before performing the operation, surgeons “shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from [her] cervix,” without consent (33). From there, the scientists received those samples and “labeled each [test tube] … using the first two letters of the patient’s
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by: Rebecca Skloot has a lot of themes, but one that is most relevant in my opinion is the racial politics of medicine. Throughout the chapters, there were examples of how Henrietta, being African American, prevented her from receiving the same treatment as the white woman sitting right next to her in the waiting room. The story begins with Henrietta going to Johns Hopkins Hospital and asking a physician to check a “knot on her womb.” Skloot describes that Henrietta had been having pain around that area for about a year, and talked about it with her family, but did not do anything until the pains got intolerable. The doctor near her house had checked if she had syphilis, but it came back negative, and he recommended her to go to John Hopkins, a known university hospital that was the only hospital in the area that would treat African American patients during the era of Jim Crow. It was a long commute, but they had no choice. Patient records detail some of her prior history and provide readers with background knowledge: Henrietta was one of ten siblings, having six or seven years of schooling, five children of her own, and a past of declining medical treatments. The odd thing was that she did not follow up on upcoming clinic visits. The tests discovered a purple lump on the cervix about the size of a nickel. Dr. Howard Jones took a sample around the tissue and sent it to the laboratory.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta Lacks. In the early 1951 Henrietta discovered a hard lump on the left of the entrance of her cervix, after having unexpected vaginal bleeding. She visited the Johns Hopkins hospital in East Baltimore, which was the only hospital in their area where black patients were treated. The gynecologist, Howard Jones, indeed discovers a tumor on her cervix, which he takes a biopsy off to sent it to the lab for diagnosis. In February 1951 Henrietta was called by Dr. Jones to tell about the biopsy results: “Epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, Stage I”, in other words, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Before her first radium treatment, surgeon dr. Wharton removed a sample of her cervix tumor and a sample of her healthy cervix tissue and gave this tissue to dr. George Gey, who had been trying to grow cells in his lab for years. In the meantime that Henrietta was recovering from her first treatment with radium, her cells were growing in George Gey’s lab. This all happened without the permission and the informing of Henrietta Lacks. The cells started growing in a unbelievable fast way, they doubled every 24 hours, Henrietta’s cells didn’t seem to stop growing. Henrietta’s cancer cell grew twenty times as fast as her normal healthy cells, which eventually also died a couple of days after they started growing. The first immortal human cells were grown, which was a big breakthrough in science. The HeLa cells were spread throughout the scientific world. They were used for major breakthroughs in science, for example the developing of the polio vaccine. The HeLa-cells caused a revolution in the scientific world, while Henrietta Lacks, who died Octob...
Henrietta Lacks is not a common household name, yet in the scientific and medical world it has become one of the most important and talked names of the century. Up until the time that this book was written, very few people knew of Henrietta Lacks and how her cells contributed to modern science, but Rebecca Skloot aimed to change this. Eventually Skloot was able to reach Henrietta’s remaining family and through them she was able to tell the story of not only the importance of the HeLa cells but also Henrietta’s life.
Most people live in capitalist societies where money matters a lot. Essentially, ownership is also of significance since it decides to whom the money goes. In present days, human tissues matter in the scientific field. Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, shows how Henrietta Lacks’s cells have been used well, and at the same time, how they have been a hot potato in science because of the problem of the ownership. This engages readers to try to answer the question, “Should legal ownership have to be given to people?” For that answer, yes. People should be given the rights to ownership over their tissues for patients to decide if they are willing to donate their tissues or not. Reasons will be explained as follows.
In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot tells the true story of the woman who the famous HeLa cells originated from, and her children's lives thereafter. Skloot begins the book with a section called "A Few Words About This Book", in which a particular quote mentioned captured my attention. When Skloot began writing Henrietta's story, one of Henrietta's relatives told Skloot, "If you pretty up how people spoke and change the things they said, that's dishonest. It’s taking away their lives, their experiences, and their selves" (Skloot). After reading that quote, an array of questions entered my mind, the most important being, "Do all nonfiction authors take that idea into consideration?" Nonfiction is a very delicate and
HeLa cells were one of the greatest medical inventions that came about for the scientific field and yet the woman behind this medical feat is not fully remembered and honored. Her cells and tissue were taken away from her without consent and more than that, she was exploited for being black and not questioning what the doctor was doing. Her family suffered through countless years of agonizing pain in which they were misinformed about where and what her cells were being used for. Yes, HeLa cells changed the way we view medicine today, but only at the cost of creating one of the greatest controversies of owning ones body.
In “Part 1: Life” of “The immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, she starts telling us the life of Henrietta, where she grew, that she married Day, and everything she went trough with her cancer. But, more than that, Skloot is trying to show us the ethical, social, and health issues black people had back in those days, and also she wants to let us know how lucky we are to live in this period where we have a lot of opportunities, racism is not a strong movement but still affects the society a little, and of course give thanks to the advances of the medical and science world most of it because of the HeLa cells.
The book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, talks about the way that Henrietta Lacks’ cells changed the medical history by living for years and years, but many people didn’t know the real story behind the woman with the immortal cells. Other than knowing about the HeLa cells, no one had heard about Henrietta Lacks or how she came to be. Many people didn’t even know that Henrietta was black. No one knew about the life she lived, her family, where she worked, or anything else about this mysterious woman who changed medical history. That is… until Rebecca Skloot decided to go searching for information about her, and wrote this book.
The first character we meet is Ruth Younger. Ruth is a hardworking mother who has had a thought life up until this point. The Writer opens up describing her by saying that “she was a pretty girl, even exceptionally so, but now it is apparent that life has been little that she expected, and disappointment has already begun to hang in her face.” (Pg. 1472) This description bears a strong resemblance to the line in Harlem, “Does it dry up, like a raison in the sun?” (Line 2) We immediately are thrown into the madness of her life. She wants desperately to have a happy family and is in constant disagreement with her husband’s ideas. We see how her living arrangements have made her believe that there will never be anything better in this world for her. The saddest part is that she believes that bringing another child into this sad existence is something she cannot do. When she makes the decision to visit the abortion doctor, it immediately brought me to the final line in the poem where Hughes states “Or does it explode?” (Line 11) There had to be an explosion of desperation for a w...
The author uses this title or section to describe the woman behind the cells she’s so famous for, to bring life to her. This section of the book brings in the human aspect of Henrietta so that the reader will first see her as a person before acknowledging her as HeLa. This section helps aid the reader with an emotional attachment to her as a person. Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920. Her birth name was Loretta Pleasant but "No one knows how she became Henrietta" (Skloot18). This quote stands out as it becomes clear that little is known about a woman who contributed so much. This section of the book draws the reader in and sheds light on Henrietta’s life. Her life is far from easy, even before she becomes sick. She is a strong black woman who becomes a mother at the tender age of 14. She later moves to Turner Station with her unfaithful husband and faces poverty and segregation throughout her entire life. By giving this section its own place in the book and putting it first, enlightens the reader on who she
The initiative wasn’t taken to learn about the family or the origin of the cells. Roland H. Berg, a press officer at the NFIP, sent George Gey, head of tissue-research at John Hopkins, a letter saying, “ An intrinsic part of this story would be to describe how these cells, originally obtained from Henrietta Lakes, are being grown and used for the benefit of mankind” (pg. 106). This letter is a very clear representation of the lack of knowledge from society. Berg referred to Henrietta as “Henrietta Lakes” on multiple occasions in the letter. The correct form of her name wasn’t even known. A name is such a distinct representation of identity and Henrietta’s was so commonly mixed up and misspelled. An opposing view could argue that the scientists’ job was to work with the cells. Their goal was not to learn the family tree of the individual, but to make discoveries using the cells. It wasn’t until the autopsy of Henrietta Lacks, that people started to face reality: HeLa is not just a cell line. HeLa was a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a best friend. Mary Gey, George Gey’s wife and research assistant, viewed Henrietta’s body once it was being used for tests in the autopsy room. She noticed that Henrietta had her toenails painted with a bright red polish. Mrs. Gey said, “When I saw those toenails, I nearly fainted. I
In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many characters must adjust to the face of adversity to better their
The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, was a nonfiction story about the life of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Henrietta did not know that her doctor took a sample of her cancer cells a few months before she died. “Henrietta cells that called HeLa were the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory” (Skloot 22). In fact, the cells from her cervix are the most important advances in medical research. Rebecca was interested to write this story because she was anxious with the story of HeLa cells. When she was in biology class, her professor named Donald Defler gave a lecture about cells. Defler tells the story about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells. However, the professor ended his lecture when he said that Henrietta Lacks was a black woman. In this book, Rebecca wants to tell the truth about the story of Henrietta Lacks during her medical process and the rights for Henrietta’s family after she died.