Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the true story of one woman’s oblivious contribution to the medical world and the ongoing ethical controversy behind it. Henrietta’s cells, commonly called HeLa, have given rise to many scientific advancements; however many scientists still do not know who she was. Her family is also exploited by researchers and the media as they receive no information in return for their cooperation. Although the scientific community and the media view Henrietta and her family as abstractions and often misuse the help that they provide, Skloot provides an honest portrayal of both sides of the story, including the scientific perspective and the Lackses’ perspective.
The scientific community
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has taken advantage of the Lackses by leaving them ignorant to information which they are entitled to know, such as Henrietta’s contribution to medicine.
Even with the numerous advancements that HeLa brings, “her family can’t afford to see [any] doctors” (8). Scientists believe that the family’s involvement would hinder the distribution of HeLa due to the questionable methods by which the cells are attained. According to the Common Rule, research “subjects must be allowed to withdraw from research at any time” (234). Theoretically, the Lacks family has the right to withdraw HeLa from worldwide medical research because Henrietta herself is no longer living. When Victor Mckusick requests the blood of the Lacks children for research, he does not explain to them “why he was having someone draw blood” from them (131). Mckusick could have informed them of the actual purpose of the blood tests, which would have been the morally-correct option; instead he keeps his motives hidden to prevent …show more content…
potential legal conflict with the Lacks family. The main researcher responsible for the original HeLa culture, Dr. George Gey, tells many eager journalists that they must “withhold the name of the patient” if they are to publish an article pertaining to the HeLa cells (74). Dr. Gey attempts to conceal the patient’s true identity to ensure that her friends and family do not get involved. Mary Kubicek, Dr. Gey’s assistant, sees that Henrietta’s “toenails were covered in chipped bright red polish” when examining the body (63). After seeing that the patient, whose cells are being distributed worldwide, was a woman just like her, Mary understands that Henrietta was not meant to be exploited as she was by the researchers. The media also misuses the Lackses cooperation by taking information from them without their approval and being slightly dishonest in their material. The press publishes “articles . . . about the cells without their knowledge,” leaving the family very angry when they are educated of Henrietta’s contributions (6). They feel as though Henrietta’s cells belong to her children and should not be used or written about without their consent. It is “often [Henrietta] has no name at all” because majority of the media only bring attention to HeLa and do not give “the woman behind the cells” the credit she deserves (3; 73). When the public begin to take interest in where the HeLa cells came from, the press initiate the usage of the pseudonym “Helen Lane” to conceal “Henrietta’s real identity” (76). Since the press uses a fake name, the Lacks family remains unaware of HeLa until around twenty-five years after Henrietta’s death. Some news articles fabricate stories about a mysterious woman from which HeLa originated, saying that she “was a prostitute off the streets” or “a fictitious character” (123). Each fabrication draws the public farther away from the truth of Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca Skloot separates herself from mainstream media and the scientific community by showing both perspectives of the HeLa case, while remaining mostly unbiased in her delivery of the information.
She was one of the first people to not only write a biography pertaining to HeLa, but about both the “cells and the woman they came from” (6). She has a passion for the scientific angle as much as the story behind the science. Skloot’s portrayal of Henrietta as “someone’s daughter, wife, and mother” rather than simply “the woman behind the cells” shows how she viewed Henrietta as a person, not an abstraction (6; 73). Since she views the Lacks family as people not tools, she is more motivated to tell the world their story. Deborah and Skloot “form a deep personal bond” over the duration of time that they got to know each other (7). Due to their newfound connection, Skloot is able to develop the depth in her characters’ personalities and reveal their true nature, especially Deborah’s. She also conducted over “a thousand hours of interviews” in addition to extensive studies using “photos and documents, scientific and historical research,” etc. (1). Not only does she explore Henrietta’s personal life and show their perspectives on HeLa, but also she examines countless scientific resources to demonstrate the scientific community’s perspective on
HeLa. Similar cases to Henrietta Lacks have been reported where the scientific community or the press had taken advantage of an individual. John Moore’s spleen was used to conduct research without his consent and resulted in the creation of a cell line, which became very profitable. Dr. Chester Southam experimented on his cancer patients by injecting cancerous HeLa cells into them, again without their consent. Many researchers and scientists believe that it is acceptable to dehumanize a person into a research subject for a greater good, which was the justification to the mistreatment of Henrietta and her family. While the majority of the scientific community and the media exploit Henrietta and her family for their own gain, Rebecca Skloot counters the injustice with voicing the truth behind internationally-recognized HeLa cells.
An abstraction can be defined as something that only exists as an idea. People are considered abstractions when they are dehumanized, forgotten about, or segregated and discriminated against. The scientific community and the media treated Henrietta Lacks and her family as abstractions in several ways including; forgetting the person behind HeLa cells, giving sub-par health care compared to Caucasians, and not giving reparations to the Lacks family. On the other hand, Rebecca Skloot offers a different perspective that is shown throughout the book. Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks describes the trials and tribulations the Lacks family has gone through because of HeLa cells and shows how seeing a person as an abstraction is a dangerous thing.
Henrietta’s cells were being inaugurated with space travel, infused into rat cells, and even being used to make infertile hens fertile again. However, these are only a few of the many accomplishments that Henrietta’s immortal cells made possible: “The National Cancer Institute was using various cells, including HeLa, to screen more than thirty thousand chemicals and plant extracts, which would yield several of today’s most widely used and effective chemotherapy drugs, including Vincristine and Taxol,”(pg.139). This example of logos from the text again shows just how important these Henrietta’s cells were to the future developments in
All I can say is amazing information of your glorious and late Henrietta Lacks. This incedible women bettered our society in ways no common human could understand at the time because of how complex this matter was and still very much indeed is. I know there is much contraversy with the matter of how scientists achived immortal cells from your late relative, and I do strongly agree with the fact that it was wrong for these researches to take advantage of this incredible women, but I know it is not for me to say nonethless it must be said that even though it was wrong to take Lacks’ cells when she was dying sometimes one must suffer to bring joy to the entire world.
In the novel The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, the author tells the miraculous story of one woman’s amazing contribution to science. Henrietta Lacks unknowingly provides scientists with a biopsy capable of reproducing cells at a tremendusly fast pace. The story of Henrietta Lacks demonstrates how an individual’s rights can be effortlessly breached when it involves medical science and research. Although her cells have contributed to science in many miraculous ways, there is little known about the woman whose body they derived from. Skloot is a very gifted author whose essential writing technique divides the story into three parts so that she, Henrietta
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.
Rebecca Skloot has done a marvelous job telling the story of Henrietta Lacks; the woman who changed science!
To have something stolen from you is devastating and can change your life. But what if what was taken from you will save billions of human lives? In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, we see a woman named Henrietta had a biopsy of a cancerous tumor, and the cells from the tumor were able to live and grow outside of her body; and even better, the cells go on to find the cure for diseases such as polio. The catch is this: she signed a document giving her hospital permission to perform any medical procedure they find necessary to help her treatment, but she never gave specific permission for the cells in that biopsy to be tested and cultured. Now the big debate is over whether or not it was legal for her doctors
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.
Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, depicts the violation of medical ethics from the patient and researcher perspectives specifically when race, poverty, and lack of medical education are factors. The novel takes place in the southern United States in 1951. Henrietta Lacks is born in a poor rural town, Clover, but eventually moves to urban Turner Station. She was diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins hospital where cells was unknowingly taken from her and used for scientific research. Rebecca Skloot describes this when she writes, “But first—though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting sample or asked she wanted to be a donor—Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta's cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish” (33). The simple act of taking cells, which the physicians did not even think twice about, caused decades
..., the name of Henrietta Lacks needs to be introduced to the world since she is the woman who generated HeLa cells, because the name of the person who generated HeLa cells is still unknown. By doing this, her family will be honored and respected by others.
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.
What is privacy? Well, it’s the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people. In terms of information, it is the right to have some control over how one’s own personal information is collected and used. This is a right that has been inherently protected by the U.S Constitution, agreed upon by the Supreme Court, and yet, issues around this very topic arise every day. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author Rebecca Skloot, addresses this issue in her story of the women behind the infamous HeLa cells. Her story shows that although privacy is a right that is inherently protected by the law, situations of injustice can still occur. Examples of this in the book include when Henrietta’s cells were given to Dr. Gey without any consent from Day, the situation in which Mr. Golde’s spleen was sold without his permission, as well as when the Lacks family were recontacted and mislead about the reasons they were tested years after Henrietta’s death.
Laying on a chilling silver surgery table, completely vulnerable. Not knowing that the surgeon, whom you trusted, is now taking important parts of your body to research on. You wake up to never know that because of your existence you've changed the face of science history forever. In a book written by Rebecca Skloot “The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks,” Skloot writes about the life of a African American woman and her cells that change the history of health and science, and this woman's name is Henrietta Lacks. Although Lacks was such an important impact in science history, Lacks and her family were never informed. Henrietta Lacks died in October 4, 1951, of cervical cancer and never knew about the amazing breakthrough that her body made in
Henrietta Lacks did contribute to society scientifically in various ways such as vaccinating girls against cancer, eradicating polio, showing us how cells stayed young, mapping the human genome, and creating the field of virology. Many secrets didn’t emerge until the curiosity from Rebecca Skloot increased, resulting in the development of this book. There are many themes in the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks including science, immortality, race, morality, and poverty but an overlooked theme is memory. Memory is the action of storing and remembering information. Each family member held a piece to the puzzle Rebecca Skloot needed for her book. However, Deborah Lacks, Henrietta’s fourth child and Zakariyya Lacks the fifth child contributed to
Until Skloot took it upon herself to investigate the history behind the HeLa cells, there was not much information about who Henrietta’s life before her contribution to the scientific world. In a sense, HeLa cells dehumanized Henrietta, “everything was always just about the cells and [no one] even worried about her name and if HeLa was even a person” (Skloot, 122). Rather than being recognized as a mother, a daughter, a courageous woman who fought cancer, she was only known for the cells that were taken from her tumor. Henrietta did not live to see all of the people that her cells helped or the “multi-billion dollar industry” that became of HeLa cells (Skloot, 208). While her family struggled to make ends meet, never having enough money for health insurance, companies reaped the benefits of HeLa cells. Additionally, the family did not know about Henrietta’s cells until scientists began using her husband and children to further their research on HeLa cells (Skloot, 384). Continuously, the Lacks Family was being taken advantage of by the scientific world, never receiving compensation compensation for the profits HeLa cells generated. While the companies were conducting ground-breaking research to save millions of people’s lives, the Lacks family failed to receive proper medical care. It seems like there is not much harm done considering HeLa cells were saving millions of lives and the Lacks family were just a small group of people suffering. However, is it really ethical to save all of these lives knowing that the family responsible are not receiving proper medical