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. Although she was taken from the world too soon, Henrietta Lacks was a warm hearted woman, and though unbeknownst to her, she would pave the way for the medical field and greatly expand our understanding of one of the nation’s greatest killers; cancer. In 1951 people did not talk about cancer lightly; cancer was a very touchy subject, especially for those who knew they couldn’t receive treatment once they had been diagnosed. When Lacks went to the hospital because of a “knot on her womb” she never thought that it would grow into a full fledge tumor that would end up taking her life. Henrietta lived a simple yet happy life which consisted of working on the farm, loving her husband, and raising children, and she was not going to ruin the lifestyle she knew so well by telling her family that she had cancer; it was just unheard of. Henrietta was born in 1920 to a young mother who passed away a few years after Henrietta’s birth, so she moved in with her grandfather and her cousin, David Lacks, whom everyone called “Day”. Both Henrietta and Day started working at an early age and had shared a room almost their entire life, which led to them eventually having children and marrying by the time Henrietta was twenty. Later, wh... ... middle of paper ... ...Evaluation and comparison of Hela, Hep2C and Vero cell lines sensitivity to polio vaccinal virus using micro and macro vaccine potency tests. Retrieved February 3, 2014, from http://www.archrazi.com/browse.php?a_id=319&sid=1&slc_lang=en Del Puerto, H. L., Martins, A., Vasconcelos, A. C., Milsted, A., Souza-Fagundes, E. M., Braz, G. F., et al. (n.d.). Canine distemper virus induces apoptosis in cervical tumor derived cell lines. http://www.virologyj.com/content/8/1/334. Retrieved January 29, 2014, from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=c0b3ec67-82b8-411a-a30b- f445183c8885%40sessionmgr110&vid=2&hid=105 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
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.
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.
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
This section is used to demonstrate to the reader the enormous effects of her death to both her family and science. Immediately following Henrietta's death, Dr. Gey is anxious to take as many samples from her body as possible. However, he must first obtain permission from her husband for an autopsy. Henrietta's husband, Day, is tricked into giving permission. He is told the autopsy will provide test results that may help his children in the future. During the autopsy, Gey's assistant Mary Kubicek takes notice to Henrietta's painted toenails and realizes that HeLa cells belong to an actual person. She says, "they came from a live woman" (Skloot 91). A few days after the autopsy, Henrietta's body is sent from Baltimore to Clover. Henrietta is buried a few days later in an unmarked grave alongside her mother in Lacks Town. Her death is swift and little mourning is conducted by the family. By placing this section second, the reader gains insight into Henrietta's family. Her children are treated poorly and her husband is absent most of the time following her death. This section is important in understanding and gaining insight into the people closest to
Rebecca Skloot has done a marvelous job telling the story of Henrietta Lacks; the woman who changed science!
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
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 name of Henrietta Lacks needs to be introduced to the world since she is the woman who generated HeLa cells, because the name of the person who generated HeLa cells is still unknown. By doing this, her family will be honored and respected by others.
Author, Rebecca Skloot, wrote The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in 2010; this novel explores the life of an African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, which becomes “immortalized” through the culturing and exponential reproduction of her cells. Skloot uses the rhetorical devices ethos and historical allusion throughout the novel to display her credibility.
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.
As Rebecca Scoot transport her readers in her narrative of accounts of the Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, she delicately uncovers injustice not within one family but within a system. As she focuses in giving a voice to the Lacks, she also highlights the strength and leadership of the family matriarch of Henrietta Lacks and her cell know as HELA. Envisioning Mrs. Lacks and her family trajectory it exposes discrimination and bias on a much large scale than poorly uneducated oppress Negro or African American during 1950’s. The life of Henrietta and her family’s situation had moderate similarities of another book, The Isis Paper. The Isis Papers the keys to the Colors, by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing’s, (March 18, 1935- January 2, 2016.) In
The story revolves around the character Henrietta lacks, from whom cervical cancer cell lines now known as HeLa cells were obtained. The book is written by Rebecca skloot which describes her experiences while she was in the process of collecting information and writing the story and what all things she has to go through when she contacted Henrietta’s family. The first half of the story describes the life of Henrietta, how unethically cells were obtained and how the HeLa cell line was a great breakthrough to science. The second part of the story talks about the struggle that Henrietta’s family has to face to give recognition to Henrietta for what she has given to science and some other ethical issues that still bother the scientific community.
Rebecca Skloot retells the compelling story of an African American woman who contributed a great deal to science without adequate recognition. Henrietta Lacks’ cancerous cells, nicknamed HeLa, were sampled without her knowledge and poked and prodded for scientific research. Skloot writes her intricately detailed book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to express the various stories that have developed as a result of HeLa cells’ existence; She shares Henrietta’s life, death, the effects on science as well as the Lacks family and society as whole, and lastly her own experience. Each of these sectors see varying outcomes as a result of the creation of the HeLa cell line. While scientists benefited greatly
Betrayed by doctors broke Henrietta’s heart. The novel, The Immortal Life of henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot explains how Henrietta got betrayed. In the novel the character Henrietta Lacks got cancer and died, but right before she died she got her cells taken away without her knowledge and without her permission by scientists in 1951. The cells were bought and sold by the billions, and people never knew who she was or where the cells came from, she remained virtually unknown. Years later when Henrietta’s family found out that they had taken her cells away they were very disappointed specially her daughter who never knew her mother. People attack the Lacks family wanting questions answered about Henrietta because nobody knew who she was. The
In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many characters must adjust to the face of adversity to better their