Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

832 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Free health care in the united states essay

Immortality is a term that is rarely used outside of comic books and fiction novels; the term means to live forever (Merriam-Webster). Henrietta Lacks was an American woman from Clover Virginia whose cervical cancer cells were the source of the HeLa cell line. The scientific name for HeLa is helacyton gartleri and is the oldest and most commonly used human cell line. The HeLa name derived from the first two letters in the name Henrietta Lacks. After being diagnosed with cervical cancer, Henrietta sadly passed away only 8 months later. Henrietta’s cells still live and are growing today and are being used for research purposes.
In the early 1950’s a young woman who was never acknowledged (pg9) named Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical …show more content…

Henrietta showed up to Hopkins Hospital with a lump on her cervix unknown to both her and her physician that her pain would be detrimental to her health. After listening to her symptoms and examining her, Dr. Jones found a lump exactly where she said it would be. After sending her samples to the local lab Dr. Jones sent Henrietta home to wait for her results. During the first stage of her illness, Henrietta was diagnosed with “Epidermoid Carcinoma of the Cervix, stage 1” (pg. 24) by Dr. Howard Jones. According to the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks “Most cervical cancers are carcinomas, which grow from the epithelial cells that cover the cervix and protect its surface” (pg. 18). There are two types of cervical cancer, the invasive carcinoma which is deadly and the noninvasive carcinoma which is often called sugar icing carcinoma. Invasive carcinoma can be treated by chemotherapy, radiation, and laser surgery. Lacks was treated by radiation therapy which destroys any cells it encounters and can often burn the skin, it also kills any cancer cells. Henrietta was diagnosed on February 5, 1951 and didn’t tell anyone until it was time for treatments. On October 4, 1951 exactly 8 months and 1 day later Henrietta Lacks died of cervical …show more content…

Therefore, if every citizen receives free comprehensive coverage there will be less illnesses and more preventable diagnosis. For instance, if a person is healthy he or she can contribute better to the work place and could lessen the chance of unnecessary communicable diseases. Also, companies are paying less in wages which makes health coverage almost impossible to cover. If the government would cover the cost of medical treatments for all Americans, then there would be no excuse or reason to complain about seeing a doctor which could lead to less preventable deaths.
In conclusion, a poor black farmer had to be treated at a charity hospital for a tumor that later took her life. Mrs. Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with type 1 cervical cancer and had no medical insurance to relieve to finical burden that was bestowed upon her. If the government would provide free coverage to all Americans maybe it will encourage citizens to visit the doctor more often. Mrs. Lacks had a groundbreaking impact on modern medicine and her cells are still being used today to treat various

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

    1282 Words  | 3 Pages

    Smith, Stephanie. (2013, August 11). Henrietta Lacks’ family finally gets say in genetic destiny. Can we control our own?.CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/07/health/henrietta-lacks-genetic destiny/index.html?

    Read More

  • Summary: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Essay Letter To Henrietta Lacks

    411 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Henrietta Lacks Structural Analysis Essay

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    In order to fully understand the significance of the life of Henrietta Lacks, one must first understand the nature of the historical moment in which she lived, and died. Henrietta Lacks was a poor, African American woman born in 1920; Henrietta lived in Clover, Virginia, on a tobacco farm maintained by many generations of relatives. This historical moment can best be understood when evaluated using a structural analysis; a structural analysis is an examination of multiple components which form an organization; structural analyses often focus on the goals and purpose of the organization in question. Henrietta and her family were greatly affected by structural violence, a type of systematic violence exerted via legislation and discrimination. Often following systematic violence is a separate type of violence, known as symbolic violence; this occurs when structural violence is viewed as normal based on media representation or popular

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

    1147 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • The Belmont Report: The Henrietta Lacks Case

    1392 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Belmont Report identifies three core principles that are to be respected when using human subjects for research. The three ethical principles are: respect for persons, beneficence and justice. In the case of Henrietta Lacks each of these fundamental components are violated. The consent that Henrietta provided was not sufficient for the procedures that were conducted.

    Read More

  • Henrietta Lacks Thesis

    1126 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks is a book about the women behind the scientific revolution of using actual cancer cells to perform cancer research. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who was barely educated and worked as a tobacco farmer. At the age of thirty she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. In Lacks’ time being uneducated, African American, and a woman was not a great mix. They were often undermined and taken advantage of. When Lacks started to become very ill she went to the nearest hospital that would accept black patients. There the doctor, George Gey, misdiagnosed her illness and took a tissue sample without her consent. After suffering through her illness and trying to keep up with her five children Henrietta died

    Read More

  • Authenticity in Nonfiction: The Henrietta Lacks Story

    1642 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Theme Of Medical Ethics In The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

    1564 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Henrietta Lacks Essay

    763 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art,” said Josef Mengele, comparing science to an art. He was less of an artist and more of a curious, debatably crazy, doctor. He was a scientist in Nazi Germany. In general, there was a history of injustice in the world targeting a certain race. When Mengele was around, there were very few medical regulations, so no consent had to be given for doctors to take patients’ cells and other tests done on the patients’ bodies without their consent. This was the same time that Henrietta Lacks lived. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who went to the doctor because she had cervical cancer. Her cells were taken and are still alive in culture today (Skloot 41). Hence, her cells were nicknamed Immortal (Skloot 41). Although many, at the time, saw no issue with using a patient without consent issue with what?, on numerous occasions since then courts have determined that having consent is necessary for taking any cells. The story of Henrietta lacks is has similarities to an episode of Law and Order titled Immortal, which is an ethical conundrum. Despite this, the shows are not exactly the same and show differences between them. Both of these stories, one supposedly fictional, can also be compared to the injustices performed by Josef Mengele in Nazi Germany.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

    1341 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: A Doctoring Lens Rebecca Skloot begins The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with a quote from Elie Wiesel: Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, With its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, And with some measure of triumph. This quote centers Henrietta Lacks’ story around the same questions that have driven the Doctoring course: What does it mean to care for others? And how do we ensure that we care for our patients first as people, rather than as a disease? In many ways, Henrietta Lacks’ story is a textbook case in how not to be a good physician.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

    1039 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Book Review: The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks

    1084 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagine having a part of your body taken from you without your permission, and then having those cells that are a part of your body grow and are being processed in labs around the world and then ultimately being used for the highest of research. That is what happens to Henrietta Lacks. In the book, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, we see Henrietta Lacks and her families story unravel, the numerous hardships that they faced, and the shocking revelation that their relative cells were being used for research without her consent and theirs.

    Read More

  • Free Healthcare in the US

    1778 Words  | 4 Pages

    It is essential for the United States government to provide its entire citizen with a free health care. This system ensures that everyone has an access to medical services regardless to his or her social status. It is an important way of preserving life as free health care plan ensures free treatment to the entire citizen. In addition, it can play a big role of ensuring that there is an improved access to health services. Ensuring that all American citizens have an access to the right health care will in turn decrease health care costs. It can also help to stop medical bankruptcies in the entire nation. Lastly, it is one way of reducing poverty as it will lower the debt of the US which would then increase employment.

    Read More

More about Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

Open Document