In Rebecca Skloot’s novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author investigates the origin of a line of “immortal cells” used for research on various diseases. The cells were immortal in the sense that they continued to multiply long after the person from whom they came passed away. This quality made them priceless in the field of medical research. The cells were called HeLa, after the person from whom the cells were initially harvested-Henrietta Lacks. As Rebecca learns more about Henrietta and her family, certain injustices in the field of public health are made apparent.
Public health is a vast field that encompasses many issues. Generally speaking, it deals with the safety and protection of people in a society as well as education
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Doctors often would not inform their patients of everything they were doing to them and they did most things without a patient’s consent. In the book, Henrietta was not aware of many of the things the doctors were doing to her. They took samples of her tumor without her knowledge. The treatments that were given to her had negative side effects that she was not made aware of. The doctors’ and researchers’ actions had similar effects on Henrietta’s family. The family was never aware that her cells were being used in laboratories or that researchers were making millions of dollars off of them. Even when the Lackses were made aware of the research being conducted on the cells, it caused the family a great deal of confusion and distress. When they finally found out about the HeLa cells, it was because a doctor wanted to take their blood to test for genetic markers. The doctors did not explain this to the poorly educated Lackses, who thought they were being tested for cancer. This miscommunication caused Henrietta’s family to panic, for they thought they were going to die just like Henrietta. On the other hand, on the national level, HeLa cells served as a platform for research about many diseases, including cancer and polio. The cells progressed the scientific research on genetics and diseases further than ever thought …show more content…
They solved many issues that dealt with patient-doctor confidentiality, which was a huge problem at the time. They implemented laws and regulations to give the patient more control over their healthcare. They began treating their patients as human beings instead of experiments. However, not everything they did was good. I thought that it was sad that HeLa cells gave so much to everyone else, yet the Lackses did not reap any benefits that came from HeLa cells. Health Professionals were making millions of dollars by selling HeLa cells, yet the family of the person who contributed those cells could not even afford medical insurance. Any of the doctors or researchers could have easily set up a fund for Henrietta’s family given all that Henrietta’s cells did for them and the field of medical research in general. The health professionals took advantage of the fact that the Lackses lacked higher education and an understanding of what was happening to Henrietta’s cells. If the family had knowledge of the profits the researchers were making, they could have fought for rights to portions of them and used them to better their
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.
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
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
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...
Five Reasons Henrietta Lacks is the Most Important Woman in Medical History. (n.d.). Popular Science. Retrieved February 2, 2014, from http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/five-reasons-henrietta-lacks-most-important-woman-medical-history
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 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.
These two group cannot work together because of conflicting distribution of power. These groups can also be called the “bourgeoisie” known as the powerful or the “proletariat” which is the powerless. In this theory both groups are constantly at conflict because one group wants to maintain power while the other group is powerless. In the case of Henrietta the groups that are in power are the companies who are mass producing her cells and the doctors who obtained the cells. And the group who is powerless is Henrietta and her family. This unequal distribution of people comes from henrietta's social status, lack of power, and low wealth. Rebecca Skloot (2011) states in her book that Henrietta's family still lived in poverty even after discovering the multibillion dollar cell production. () And according to Gloria Blackwell from the AAWU, she states that Henrietta's name was not released until the 1970s and even then her family didn’t know that the HeLa cells were still being produced. This conduct continued for 25 years after her death. () According to Rebecca Skloot, in her book she states that Henrietta's husband, Day, consented to the autopsy of her body because he was promised that this will helps his kids one day. However, even after agreeing to the autopsy his kids still lived in poverty and was not ever
...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.
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.
‘The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks’ is about a black woman who died in 1951. Her cancerous cervix cells, taken without her knowledge by a doctor at John Hopkins Hospital, were the first ‘immortal cells’, meaning they could be cultured in a lab. Her cell line, named HeLa (after Henrietta Lacks), then became one of the most important tools in medicine. However, this book not only focusses on the scientific story of HeLa cells, but also on the story of the woman behind the cells. It consists of three storylines, which will all be described below.
The novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by author Rebecca Skloot is about a black woman whose cells were used by doctors to study medicine without her knowledge or her permission. Rebecca Skloot first heard of Henrietta Lacks when she was 16-years-old in her college biology class. Her professor, Donald Defler, mentioned Henrietta briefly during his lesson about cells. Defler talked about how Henrietta’s cells helped scientists learn all they know about cell and cell culture today, and allowed them to develop disease-fighting drugs to combat herpes, leukemias, influenza, hemophilia and Parkinson’s disease. Although Defler did acknowledge the fact that it was Henrietta’s cells who helped change the future of medicine, all Defler added was that she was a black woman. Skloot was unsatisfied with this information and she wanted to know more about Henrietta Lacks, such as “Where was she from?... Did she know how important her cells were? Did she have any children?” (Skloot 4). The problem was, though, that no one cared to find out anything about the person whose cells were famous all over the world. Most people, in fact, did not even realize that her name was Henrietta Lacks, and not Helen Lane. All people knew about this woman was that her cancerous cells were referred to as HeLa cells. Thus, Skloot’s purpose was to inform people around the world about the life of the woman whose
Did you ever wonder what are when HELA cells came to exist ?In the book the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, The author answers all your questestion that you could ever have about HELA cells. In this book be theme would be injustice because the doctors took the cells form her Henrietta without her knowing because she was poor and didn’t have the money. HELA cells first came to be when Henrietta Lacks was telling a couple of her friends that she felt like she had a knot in her stomach. Five months later she had a child, but the pain in her stomach still continued, so she finally went to doctor Jones to look inside her to see if there was anything wrong. When the doctor was done with his inspection he told her that she
The credibility and trustworthiness of a person can be achieved through their achievements and titles. Writers have the ability of achieving this by appealing to the rhetorical strategy ethos. Rebecca Skloot’s inclusion of her knowledge in science to provide her credibility and numerous information of all her characters in the novel helps develop the rhetorical strategy of ethos. Skoot’s implementation of appealing to ethos aids in emphasizing on the credibility of both herself and all the other characters in the novel. She demonstrates this rhetorical strategy by indicating titles and achievements her characters in the novel. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot develops the rhetorical strategy of ethos through the use of her characters in the novel consisting of Skloot herself, George Gey, and the virologist Chester Southam.