Argumentative Essay On Henrietta Lacks

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is the story of Hela cells and the women and family behind them. HeLa cells are the cells that have helped scientists all around the world discover cures and vaccines that have saved thousands of lives. But before they did all those things, they were inside a woman, named Henrietta Lacks, and were taken from her without her knowledge. Her family would not know about her cells until years after her death and millions of dollars in revenue gained from the HeLa cells. At the time doctors did what was considered common practice but did they cross a line? Or were the amazing scientific achievements enough to excuse the violation of personal privacy? Despite good intentions doctors should never have taken Henrietta’s cells without her consent, and furthermore her family deserves compensation for the work those cells have helped accomplish, and the sometimes horrible circumstances they have had to deal with because of the cells.

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.

Henrietta Lacks died never knowing the impact her life would have on the world of medicine. A poor, black woman living in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1950s, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died only nine short months after her diagnosis at the age of thirty-one. The mother of five children, Henrietta most likely died thinking her family would be her legacy. Little did she know her doctor at John Hopkins hospital, George Gey, had taken some of her cells before she died. With Henrietta’s cells, Dr. Gey was finally able to achieve a goal he had been working toward for decades – creating the first line of immortal cells (Freeman). These cells have been used for countless scientific research and have solidified Henrietta Lacks’ place

Finding discoveries that would greatly benefit medicine have always been difficult to achieve in cancer research. Though, everything changed on February 1, 1951, when Howard Jones discovered that Henrietta Lacks had cervical cancer. When George Gey heard of this, he took samples from Henrietta Lacks’ tumor, and found something that changed for future medical research. George Gey had noticed that Henrietta Lacks’ cancer cells was the first human cell line that could be consistently passaged. The cells were later called HeLa cells, which were named after Henrietta Lacks. Even though scientists greatly benefited from it, Henrietta Lacks, nor her family profited from it.

The prologue of the book shows us the real name of the main character to clear off any doubts in the reader’s mind, “beneath the photo, a caption says her name is “Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.” … Her real name is Henrietta lacks.” (Skloot, 1). The Author introduces Henrietta and tells us the reason why she is writing about her, then she goes on to explain what a cell looks like and she compared it to the buzz on a New-York city street, (Skloot, 3), she also mentioned meeting Deborah which gives a clue that she would be of great importance in the writing of this book.

Racism wasn’t far from this case the doctor in Henrietta’s case figured that telling her what they were doing would only confuse her and her family even more so they just figure to not tell her or her family at all. This case started in 1951 and the research on the cells still goes on till the present.

Due to severe pains, on January twenty-ninth, nineteen fifty-one, Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland where she was diagnosed with cervical cancer by Dr. Howard Jones. She was a patient in the “colored ward”. During her eight month long radiation treatments, doctors removed two dime-sized samples of her cancer-ridden cervix without ever informing her, asking her permission and letting her family know. Henrietta Lacks died of cancer a few months after her diagnosis on October fourth, nineteen fifty-one, at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the age of thirty-one, leaving behind her husband

In 1951 there was a young black lady who was named Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was a tobacco farmer in Clover, Virginia. Her mother died giving birth and her father moved the family to Clover, where the children were distributed among some of the close relatives. In January of 1951 she went to John Hopkins hospital, which was the only place close to her that treated black patients at the time. Lacks described a “knot” in her stomach that ended up being cervical cancer. During her treatments two samples from her

It clearly obvious that to George Guy- the man who discovered HeLa cells- Henrietta was the same black women she was before she died and after she died. During this period of time, there were no set laws regarding that a patient must give permission or be notified if they cells were extracted from them. Even so, being African American and a woman during this extremely racist time period there was guarantee that she would even be told or lied to, similar to the 600 African Americans who were involved in the Tuskegee syphilis experimentation who were actually lied to.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks focuses on many issues that Henrietta and her family have faced over the years resulting from the discovery of HeLa cells. One such issue that was recurrently present was the ethical issue of informed consent, or the lack of it, in the Lacks’ case. In the beginning when Henrietta was first being treated with radium to kill her cancerous tumor, her primary doctor, Dr. TeLinde, took a sample of the tissue and sent it to Dr. Gey, head of tissue

1. I believe that there would be no questioning whatsoever of public interpretation being a different view if it has been published in 1951 by the “story” being the centered focus on Henrietta’s cells incredible abilities compared to Henrietta's life and the important/main character she represented to many people in her town. The fact that she was African American and the public interpretation in a way ignored her existence (other than her cells) really proves to us how publicity in that time period of segregation, as well as racism avoided anything that happened to shine a light on the wrongdoings/experimentation and racial discrimination within the subject of African Americans. As I said there is no questioning the story to be different from today. The story is now being presented today because people of this generation are more focused on whether the doctors did something right or something wrong to Henrietta in the eyes of the public, as well as and in the eyes of Henrietta’s family, of which ones are still around today, by taking her cells without permission. Today we are left here to think about questions such as, “What if they were to have asked Henrietta

The medical community did not explain to or inform the Lacks family of the HeLa cells; along the way the scientists altogether forgot that Henrietta and her family were not abstractions but actual people. The family felt that this was unethical; they felt their mother was robbed and taken advantage of. Despite the spread of HeLa cells and the whirlwind of new research that followed, there were no recent news or stories about “the birth of the amazing HeLa cell line” (Skloot 58). In the beginning, when Gey had kept the origin of the cells- or Henrietta - a secret, no one knew where the cells had came from and no one cared to ask.

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.

How would you feel about going to painful treatments everyday of your life? How about losing your mother? How would you feel? What if she helped make one of the most important scientific discoveries in the world? Would you feel upset, angry, or confused? This right here is why my greatest empathy goes to Henrietta Lacks and her family. To go deeper in my questions and explain why I said this because, Henrietta Lacks if you didn’t know after she was diagnosed with cervical cancer everyday just about she had to walk to John Hopkins hospital to get painful and dreadful treatment for the rest of her life. Furthermore, Henrietta Lacks died at the age of 31 on October 4, 1951. This means Deborah and the rest of her siblings grew up without their

In this case, it also seems that the doctors who treated Henrietta had something more important for research in mind rather than saving her from her cancer.