Analysis: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is a story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks, but many people refer to her as HeLa. Henrietta was the wife of David Lacks and a mother to her children. Henrietta noticed a knot on her cervix one day and became concerned. After a while Henrietta decided to seek medical attention. Henrietta got examined at John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, which was when Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951. Henrietta underwent many painful x-ray therapy and radium treatments to get rid of the cancer, during these treatments some tissue from Henrietta’s tumor was removed without informing her or her family. The tissue was taken to George Grey, who was John Hopkins head in the Tissue Culture

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.

In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. She has composed this biography of Henrietta Lacks to inform her readers about the hard reality that the Lacks family went through. In order to grasp a better understanding about this novel we will first uncover some details about Henrietta and her cells. Next, we will discuss how she came from a large family and that they were originally from Virginia. Finally, we will examine what she did after she moved to Baltimore and what happened after the move throughout the first two chapters.

This is a book that tells a story of an African-American woman and the Scientific journey of her cells, it also goes in depth about how her daughter came to find out about her immortal cells. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is divided into three layers and each part discusses different event that happened during the course of Henrietta’s life, death, and immortality. If the story was written in a chronological order would it had made it easier or harder to understand the more important things?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book written by Rebecca Skloot in 2010 that tells the story of Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line known as HeLa found in her cervical cancer cells in 1951. Rebecca Skloot first heard about Henrietta Lacks in a college biology classroom back when she was a teenager. Henrietta Lacks was a 31 years old black tobacco farmer who died of cancer, and without her or her family’s knowledge, a sample of the HeLa cell was taken from her and was used in medical researches. The HeLa cells were the first human cells to survive and multiply, and since it was taken has been used in scientific research all over the world, and have played a huge role in medical

How would you feel if something was taken away from you without your knowledge? You would been extremely mad, once you found out about it, right? Well that’s exactly what happened to a woman named Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks had cervical cancer and a doctor by the name of George Gey, took two samples of Henrietta’s cervix (without telling Henrietta or her family) one from the good part that did not have cancer and one from the cancer side. Doctor Gey put the two samples in tubes and named them “HeLa”. A young woman named Rebecca Skloot found out about the immortality that Henrietta and her family faced though the process of her cancer, when Rebecca was only sixteen. Rebecca researched Henrietta, her family, and “HeLa” cells for about ten

Cancer is experimented with HeLA on Patients without their consent. The work is done by Chester South Thames.

In both "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" and "The Lives of a Cell" they discuss cancer and how through the use of cells,we could create the right medicine. In "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" the author talks about the immortal cell line and how doctors took it without her permission. Henrietta's cells have made history in the advancement of not only cancer treatment but other illnesses.The doctors that cut out small fragments of Henrietta's cells didn't even ask for consent.Most people believe the doctors didn't see Henrietta's as a person that's why the doctors believed they did not need consent. Whether due to ethnic reasons we do not know, but we do know that Henrietta's cells still live on today and her body was not her own.

No one would have suspected when Henrietta Lacks was born in 1920 that she would change the study of cells forever. She was born with the name Loretta Pleasant to Eliza and Johnny Pleasant, however her name was soon changed to Henrietta. When her mother died in 1924 giving birth to her tenth child, Henrietta’s father gave his children to the care of various relatives in Virginia. Henrietta ended up in the care of her grandfather, Tommy Lacks, and sharing a room with her cousin David “Day” Lacks (Biography.com Editors).

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a story about a young African American woman whose cancer cells were taken from her and grown. They became one of the most important tools in medicine. It’s also the story about how her family couldn’t afford health insurance. This book yields a horrifying look on America’s true values: economic status, religion, and discrimination. Poverty stricken people were the subject of discrimination in the United States.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, is a book about an African-American woman, Henrietta Lacks, who had cervical cancer in the early 1950s. Henrietta went to John Hopkins hospital, one of the only hospitals to treatment African-Americans, they derived part of her cancer cells from her cervix and tried to keep growing her cells for research to try and discover a cure for cervical cancer. They have tried this on many patients before, but Henrietta’s cells were special and kept growing, while the other patient’s cells would die. However, Henrietta Lacks and her family had no idea about the doctors taking her cells and medical records and sending them to other doctors around the world. In Skloot’s book there are many ethical

Elie Wiesel once stated: “We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” This means that every aspect of a person is important because they all have a story to tell which is unique. They all are much more than the stories told about them. Everyone has faced challenges in their life whether it be emotionally or physically, but have also have had achievements. In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, both the scientific community and the media are guilty of having viewed Henrietta and her family as abstractions. She was an African American women from whom a scientists took cancerous cells found in the tumor located in her cervix. The cells were named HeLa and were grown to an inconceivable number and became

1. What enticed me the most and caught my interest from the beginning was how the work in this class was not hesitant to address real-world issues. Throughout the periods of time in my former English classes, the problems we discussed and subsequently wrote about were not ones that were applicable to my life, or any ordinary life in general; they were issues that coincided with the lives of outliers, making them difficult to write about and relate to. This class, however, has thoroughly analyzed a vast array of topics that are incessantly debated about in our world today, from how poverty impacts people, how informed consent is of utmost importance in the medical industry, how abortion is viewed by many, and scores of other subjects

Ethics, in our society, are the moral principles that govern our behavior, dictating what is right from wrong. The specifics of ethics changes as values in our society change and evolve. This occurs in Rebecca Skloots book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. One major reoccurring theme in the book is the lack of informed consent and autonomy. Fortunately, now there are safeguards which protect human rights in regard to health care and research. The Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, now part of the Department of Health and Human Services, created The Belmont Report, which is one such safeguard establishing principles for all human research (USDHHS, 1979). This paper will discuss the ethical issue of informed consent within The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the disregard to parts of the Belmont Report, as well as compare the role of the nurse in charge of Henrietta’s care versus the standards of care set for modern nurses.

This research paper is based on the findings from the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. What you will read and come to know is nonfiction. I wish I could put the pictures of what I have seen and read together here for you to perhaps get a better understanding. A story based on not Henrietta’s life being that of immortality, but rather cancer cells removed from her body without her knowledge. These were the first cancer cells to reproduce outside of her body. You will come to know about Henrietta, her cancer, her cells, and her immortal life. Perhaps we can all learn to appreciate life in greater means of appreciation after reading and knowing the life and immortal afterlife of Henrietta Lacks. You will learn about a woman, who like us, had a family, and ended up not being able to truly live life to its fullest. Making us all realize just how cancer is and the amazing research that came from being able to reproduce her cells. Not just for cancer but for various other illnesses that plague so many of us. My hope is that you take away from this a better understanding of a time we do not know, for the ups and downs of science and the possibility of immortal life.