Analysis of The Inmortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The story, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot starts off with Rebecca Skloot’s narration, of the first time she had heard of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks had cervical cancer but technically died of uremic poisoning. When she was treated with radium, they took a sample of her cells and sent it to a scientist by the name of George Gey. Gey wanted to find cells that didn’t stop multiplying even after they were out of the body, and Henrietta’s cancer cells were the 1st known cells in history to fit that description. After Gey found out about Henrietta’s immortal cells, he sent them to scientists all over the world. Jonas Salk used Henrietta’s cells to find the cure for polio. Meanwhile Henrietta’s children didn’t know about any of this, mostly because almost everyone thought that the HeLa cell line stood for Helen Lanes.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot is a book filled with drama and ethical dilemmas. The book is broken into three sections which focus not only on the story of Henrietta Lacks, but the life of her family following her death. Part one, Life introduces readers to Henrietta and her family before she was officially the woman behind HeLa. In this section, it is discovered that Henrietta was born in Roanoke, Virginia, but due to her mom dying while she was young she relocated to Clover, Virginia. While in Clover, she fell in love with her cousin Day and they went on to get married and had five children. The Lacks children are Lawrence, Elsie, Sonny, Deborah, and Zakariyya who were all greatly affected by the loss of their

The book is about Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line, known as HeLa, that came from Lacks's cervical cancer cells in 1951. The book is notable for its science writing and dealing with ethical issues of race and class in medical research. Skloot said that some of the information was taken from the journal of Deborah Lacks, Henrietta Lacks's daughter, as well as from "archival photos and documents, scientific and historical

In 1951, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Doctors at John Hopkins took samples from her cervix and tried to keep them alive. After Henrietta Lacks died at the age of thirty-one, the doctors asked her husband if they could do a biopsy on her and he said no but then changed his mind. They

Jimmy Nam Period 2 AP Biology The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks By: Rebecca Skloot This book report is being written for Mrs. Garza’s AP Biology class. The title of the book used is the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot.

Rebecca Skloot tells the story of Henrietta lacks and her cells that were taken from her without permission and used for a number of scientific advancements. Skloot addresses issues of bioethics in her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. She makes emotional appeals, builds her character, and makes logical appeals to celebrate the HeLa cells and make the case for Henrietta’s family to be compensated for the cells. This book focuses on the story of the family, life, and death of Henrietta Lacks.

In the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, the author Rebecca Skloot introduces the reader to a painful story of Lack’s family. The main character of the book, Henrietta Lack, had survived the interplay of poverty, race and science, as well as one of the significant medical discoveries of the century. In her book, the author narrates the lucid science tackling the issue of spookiness of the cells from spiritual perspective that the family was associated with while acknowledging that their mother was immortal. In fact, the author analyses compressively the various aspects of Henrietta Lack’s life and the HeLa cells which have made her life endless. "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" dwells upon an uncanny thing in the cancer cells of the cervix of Henrietta Lack.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot digs deep into the hidden details behind the life of an African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, who faced a long rode of unethical medical treatment after being diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of 30. Before Skloot could uncover Henrietta’s past, she first had to gain the trust of the remaining family members and people who knew Henrietta due to them being poorly portrayed by workers in the medical field and the press multiple times. Skloot was not going to get the family to open up without them fully trusting her and her intentions. The book reflects on Henrietta’s childhood leading all the way up to her death. It also reflects on the unethical practices that were being held

Elie Wiesel's amenable statement that "We must not see any person as an abstraction" reveals the diminish of Henrietta Lacks' "secrets", "treasures", "anguishes", and "triumphs" induced by the sterile, disconnected, and inhuman way in which the scientists and researchers handled HeLa, but Rebecca Skloot’s focus on Henrietta’s family and history in her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks adds some humanity back into the mother, friend, and human who was Henrietta Lacks.

The cells taken from the biopsy of Henrietta’s tumor were given to a researcher, George Gey, and her cells became a huge medical discovery because they could survive and multiply indefinitely. These cells were then named HeLa cells. HeLa cells led to many revolutionary medical advances

“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

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, tells the story of how a young black woman died from cervical cancer and that her cells were harvested and grown in a laboratory without her consent. Shortly before her death, a doctor removed a small section of her cancer cells for testing and for research purposes. These cells would become the first and most important line of human cells to survive and continually grow in the laboratory environment. Her story highlights how African American people were exploited, treated differently than whites and were used for experimentation.

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?

Gey found that Henrietta cells were different than the usual cells. It was never happening before when Gey found a cell that grows with mythological intensity in the lab. Usually, every cell will die or survive for a while in the lab. “However, the Henrietta’s cancer cells seemed unstoppable as long as they had food and warmth” (Skloot 65). This was the first immortal human cells that they called HeLa. This name came from the first two letters of the name Henrietta Lacks.

Then it was transferred to George Gey’s lab, where they would cultivate it and attempt to grow new cells from the sample, however, there was not much hope for the sample, as they all eventually died within days, sometimes even hours. Henrietta’s cells changed this, after multiple days of being cultivated and still living, Gey began to realize that he had discovered something amazing, and he slowly started to share his discovery with the world.