Henrietta Lacks Thesis

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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

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    The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is the result of years of research done by Skloot on an African American woman with cervical cancer named Henrietta Lacks. Cells from Lacks’ tumor are taken and experimented on without her knowledge. These cells, known as HeLa cells, are the first immortal human cells ever grown. The topic of HeLa cells is at the center of abundant controversial debates. Despite the fact that her cells are regarded as, “one of the most important advancements in the last hundred years” (4), little is actually known about the woman behind the cells. Skloot sets out on a mission to change this fact and share the story of the woman from whom the cells originate and her family as they deal with the effects these cells have on them.

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  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, By Rebecca Skloot

    1406 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, the author highlights the scientific advances of HeLa cells, as well as the personal setbacks of Henrietta Lacks’ family. HeLa is a commonly used cell line in laboratories worldwide and is so often referred to as “the cell line that changed modern science”. This line of immortal cells has helped advance science in ways beyond compare. HeLa has allowed cell testing, cell cloning, and the discovery of various vaccines, including the HPV vaccine. While HeLa has done wonders in the medical field, it has caused unrepairable damage among the Lacks family.

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  • 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.

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  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Rhetorical Analysis

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

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  • 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.

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  • Henrietta Lacks Quotes

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    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

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  • Henrietta Lacks Structural Analysis Essay

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    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

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  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

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    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...

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  • Henrietta Lacks Informative Speech Outline

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    Your life, like many other has probably at some point been touched by Henrietta lacks and most likely you didn’t even know it.

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  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

    1391 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • Book Review: The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks

    1084 Words  | 3 Pages

    Henrietta Lacks was born on August 18, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. She stayed with her grandfather who also took care of her other cousins, one in particular whose name is David (Day) Lacks. As Henrietta grew up, she lived with both her Grandpa Tommy and Day and worked on his farm. Considering how Henrietta and Day were together from their childhood, it was no surprise that they started having kids and soon enough got married. As the years continued, Henrietta noticed that she kept feeling like there was a lump in her womb/cervix and discovered that there was a lump in her cervix. Soon enough, Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Medical Center to get this check and learned that she had cervical cancer. But here is where the problem arises, Henrietta gave full consent for her cancer treatment at Hopkins, but she never gave consent for the extraction and use of her cells. During her first treatment TeLinde, the doctor treating Henrietta, removed 2 sample tissues: one from her tumor and one from healthy cervical tissue, and then proceeded to treat Henrietta, all the while no one knowing that Hopkins had obtained tissue samples from Henrietta without her consent. These samples were later handed to ...

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  • Henrietta Lacks Ethical Issues

    1186 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

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  • Henrietta Lacks Book Report

    298 Words  | 1 Pages

    The book is divided into three sections. In the prologue, Rebecca Skloot, the author, describes a picture of Henrietta Lacks and briefly introduces her story and gives a basic idea of the HeLa cells. She also talks about how the cells got her interest and made she decided to write this book and describes she got the information by interview Henrietta Lacks’s families and the people who related to her. The first twelve chapters of the book are mainly about a forty-one years old black woman who named Henrietta Lacks found her aggressive cervical cancer and died on October 4th 1951. Before that she did several treatments at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Maryland. However, the thing she and her families did not know was that the scientists

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