Henrietta Lacks: The Scientific Community And The Media

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In 1951, the sickness of a poor African American woman named Henrietta Lacks -also know as HeLa- would go on to change the face of scientific research; without her consent. Henrietta Lacks went into John Hopkins Hospital in hopes of medical treatment, but instead her cells were unlawfully stolen from her and used for scientific advances in the world of medicine for the creations of the polio vaccine, cell cloning, vitro fertilization, and gene mapping. Long after Henrietta's death, Henrietta's family was forced to live a life of poverty without medical insurance simply because they could not afford it although their mothers cells had yielded billions of dollars due to its advances in the medical world. The scientific community and the media …show more content…

Henrietta lacks name was purposely mis-published numerous times -as Helen Lane-, which further took away the chances of her family being financially compensated for the usage of their mothers cells. It is in the strongest belief of the family that scientist and media purposely published the wrong name to hide information about Henrietta from her family. The deceit constantly thrown at Henrietta's family by the scientist community and how the media responded proved that the media also viewed Henrietta as a concept and not as a living breathing human being because they too did not care to know or tell Henrietta's true story.

The author of the book titled "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks" was the only person to truly pay homage to Henrietta and her family. Rebecca Skloot took the perspective that Henrietta and her family were real life humans and she never strayed away from that. Rebecca went through extensive measures to travel and get the research found in her book correct, while telling an accurate and vivid account of Henrietta's life. Rebecca Skloot was the only person to see beyond the abstraction of Henrietta and be a big help to Henrietta's family. Rebecca

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