Summary: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

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.
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

first and last names,” (37) as a means of organizing and cataloguing the samples they were researching. However, the problem with this is by not using a patient’s name, researchers can easily forget that their samples originally came from a person. For example, “Scientists don’t like to think of HeLa cells as being little bits of Henrietta because it’s much easier to do science when you dissociate your materials from the people they come from…” Robert Stevenson told Rebecca Skloot during a discussion they had about renaming HeLa cells. One of the researchers that worked with the first HeLa cells proves Stevenson’s theory in her recollection of Henrietta’s autopsy. She recalled seeing Henrietta’s bright red toenail polish and thinking “Oh jeez, she’s a real person,” and did not realize, before that moment, that the cells she had been working with had a source (91).
Though, Henrietta wasn’t the only person forgotten about during the process of discovering HeLa cells. Johns Hopkins Hospital never notified the Lacks family that they had taken samples from Henrietta, nor were they told that said samples were the first cells grown in a culture medium. 20 years after her death, the family learned about HeLa cells existing because of a conversation Bobbette, Henrietta’s daughter-in-law, had with an acquaintance. In June of 1973 scientists looking for a way to accurately detect HeLa cells in other cell cultures contacted the Lackses, in hopes that they’d agree to drawing blood. The Lackses were under the impression that they were testing for cancer, later the scientists admitted to not thoroughly explaining the procedure and not having the family sign consent forms (183).
The consequences of seeing a person, or group of people, as an abstraction has a lot of consequences. For Henrietta Lacks, being a black woman before the civil rights movement meant that she was given less education, worse health care, and less opportunities than Caucasians. Because of segregation laws, it was hard for African-Americans to to find treatment so they never questioned their white doctors. “There’s no way of knowing whether or how Henrietta’s treatment would have differed if she’d been white… But several studies have shown that black patients were treated and hospitalized at later stages of their illnesses than white patients. And once hospitalized, they got fewer pain medications, and higher mortality rates” (64). For a period of time, Henrietta was even denied blood transfusions because she had used too much of the hospital’s supply. The same racist views that might have kept Henrietta from receiving the care that she needed, also kept the Lacks family in the dark about her cells. Since most white Caucasians felt that African-Americans were ignorant, doctors didn’t even bother explaining what they were doing to their black patients or ask them for consent when taking samples. Cases like that eventually lead to more regulation in the doctor-patient relationship and in human experimentation.
However, Skloot provides a different perspective on Henrietta and the rest of her family. On more than one occasion Skloot describes the unfairness and hard times the Lackses have gone through and accurately depicts the lives of several members of the family. She even reveals how long it took her to get into contact and gain the trust of the Lacks family because of the pain that they went through with previous reporters. During her time researching and spending so much time with the Lacks family she remained patient and understanding when they asked any questions about their mother. The one time she lost her temper was with Deborah, when Deborah pinned her against the wall, accusing her of lying and working for Johns Hopkins (283). On top of remaining patient, Skloot was also able to arrange for the Lackses to see Henrietta’s cells for the first time and found Elsie’s (Elsie was Henrietta’s oldest daughter) medical records.
From analyzing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks it is clear to see that Rebecca Skloot cared a lot about the life of Henrietta Lacks and her family.

From the persistent phone calls phone calls explaining her intentions to the accurate portrayal that the family so desperately wanted for Henrietta. Skloot dismantles the idea that Henrietta and her family were nothing but abstractions that did not have a place in the media or scientific community and builds on the fact that HeLa cells once belonged to a human being. That human being was a beautiful woman with “... walnut eyes, straight white teeth, and full lips… She kept her nails short so bread dough wouldn’t stick under them when she kneaded it, but she always painted them a deep red to match her toenails.”

(43)