Carrie-Claire King Major Accomplishments

Many women have had an impact on science over the years and their accomplishments tend to be underappreciated by the public eye. Often times, there are important people that have made a significant impact on the world that we have today that do not receive the credit and attention that they deserve for their accomplishments. Recognizing and acknowledging people that have made an impact on society now and in the past, is an important part of learning about history and the accomplishments of the past.

What if you had the ability to save several lives through something only you had ? Wouldn’t you like to be told and given proper credit? Well unfortunately that is not case for Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta held a powerful and significant key which has helped as a cure for many things and is still being used till this day . I choose to write about Henrietta due to the fact that she is one of histories and science unsung hero’s.

Who is Henrietta Lacks? Henrietta Lacks, known as the mother of modern medicine, was a poor African American tobacco farmer in East Baltimore who was buried in an unmarked grave sixty years ago. Upon discovering she had cervical cancer at John Hopkins University after a swab of her cells was taken, it was already to late for her. Henrietta’s children went on to live a life in poverty with no health care, while her mother’s cells launched a medical revolution. Her cells are seen as immortal, because they are grown in culture and are still living today. In addition, they were unlike

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot depicts the story of a woman named Henrietta whose cancer cells revolutionized science. Henrietta, a young black woman, grew up in the 1920s when Jim Crow laws divided the nation, making whites and blacks separate but certainly not equal. Believed to be inferior beings, blacks were not fortunate enough to have the things that white people were given such as good schools, high paying jobs and competent doctors. Black people had such poor health care and education that they believed anything a doctor said because they were lucky that they could even see a doctor. This willingness to listen to anything a doctor, or any white

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a very powerful and moving book that should be read by all lay people, young and old, doctors, scientists and especially researchers in the medical field. They have an obligation to read this book so that history should not repeat itself. Anyone that wants to study DNA genes and cells should get written consent from the patients and their families. Rebecca Skloot, takes us on an extraordinary adventure about the life and death of the protagonist Henrietta Lacks; who was a southern “colored” person diagnosed with cervical cancer during her stay at John Hopkins Hospital during the 1950s. After a year of “Doctors examining her inside and out, pressing her stomach, inserting new catheters into her bladder…..needles

One woman has helped create the polio vaccine, aid in animal cloning, been to space, and uncover the roots of HPV; all after her death in 1951. In February of 1951, Henrietta Lacks came to the hospital with

And yet, Henrietta Lacks was indirectly responsible for one of the biggest medical breakthroughs of all time, and part of her lives on today.

Henrietta Lacks was an ordinary women, nothing too extraordinary. However, on the day she walked into John Hopkins, the entire world changed. Let us be reminded that this was during the 1950’s, so there was still the colored and white sides of the hospital. However, Hopkins was still one of the top hospitals in the country, and colored people were not excluded from that. Henrietta went in for a gynecological appointment, when she learned she had cervical cancer. However, this was not the only thing that happened at the appointment. Dr. Howard Jones, without permission, took a biopsy of Henrietta’s tumor and sent samples to his laboratory colleagues. From there, Dr. TeLinde became involved. He was trying to find a cure

Chapters 23 and 24 detail how scientists collected DNA samples from the Lacks family in the 1970s. Why were the doctors interested in collecting samples from Deborah and Henrietta’s children? Did they follow an informed consent process – in other words – did Deborah and the family members understand why their genetic material was being collected and how it would be used?

Although she did not consent or live to see the breakthrough she was the donor for, Henrietta Lacks changed the course cell lines used for research for so many researchers, even undergraduate biology students at Concordia University. The power of one person! Also, the consistence and movement that Rebecca Skloot had started changed the science community. She set the tone for ethical standards that must not only be on paper but also in practice. She fueled a flame that would benefit all future research, including the test subjects, the oversight boards, and the researchers conducting the experiments. The power of one person! Sometimes when I get discouraged of my individual role in seeing a change, I can look back to Henrietta Lacks and Rebecca Skloot as evidence that just one person can indeed bring forth good change in a community, and in a

When talking about research, Henrietta Lacks is a topic for discussion. Henrietta Lacks was a woman who had a history of physical illness due to cervical cancer. Through her journey with this disease, her life ended earlier than expected. Doctors and researchers discovered that her body was dead, but her cells were still alive. The concept of patient’s rights and informed consent was not heard of back in the 1950’s. Doctors cut out a small portion of Henrietta’s cancerous cell without her permission. It was then given to a doctor at Hopkins Hospital and the HeLa

On October 4, 1951 a 31 year old woman named Henrietta Lacks passed away after months of fighting aggressive Cervical cancer. Before her death, Henrietta’s doctors had taken a small sample of the Cervical tumor that had been slowly killing her and developed what would become known as the first “immortal” cell line. Without Henrietta or her family’s knowledge, researchers named the line “HeLa” and before long were distributing the constantly replicating cells across the globe to researchers studying anything from cancer to beauty care treatments. However, Henrietta was more than just some delivery vessel for an important cell line. She was a young, beautiful, and caring mother whose

Even though she had little, she always tried to make do of what she had. She was heart-warming, beautiful, and always had a smile on her face. After her death and the impact of her cells, the character she withheld during her time of living was now tarnished. People no longer associated her as once being a living-breathing human being, but an immortal cell culture. As time progress, her name became to be HeLa cells. It took the general public decades to know her birth name and learn about the life of this woman. Skloot mentions many times that after seeing how impactful Henrietta cells became, they often forgot that these cells belonged to an actual human being, somebody who was just like us. That was why it was so important for Henrietta’s family that their mother’s life be broadcast to the world and show the public that she is much more than the HeLa cells. Her family also wanted to make themselves known, hoping to receive some kind of financial benefits. For several decades, the Lack’s family had been in the dark during the HeLa era. They were unaware of the significant impact their mother had in the world of medicine. There were no doctors who took them aside, educating them about cell culture, cellular immortality, or HeLa. As the PH story of Henrietta Lacks grew, the deeper her family was in the shadow of it. All changed, once a reporter by the name of Rebecca Skloot came into the family’s life, wanting to write about them and Mrs. Henrietta Lacks in her upcoming novel. Unlike everyone else, Skloot was aware that the Lacks family had a story to tell and that Henrietta needed her identity and to be heightened. From a national perspective, the PH story of Mrs. Lacks introduced the most well-known medical research discovery, in which helped billions of people around the world. Masses of people were able to benefit from the HeLa in a way in which they were all biologically intertwined.

Henrietta Lacks, a simple tobacco farmer, wife and mother of five, is seemingly unknown around the world, yet her cells have created medical history. Her cells were taken without her or her family’s knowledge, yet those cells are considered the cornerstone of medicine (MrDovekeeper). Even though some people argue that scientists would have figured how to fight deadly viruses and learn about the human cell and how it works without her cells, Henrietta Lacks ' cells have changed the world by helping scientists figure all this out.

Henrietta Lacks died, not knowing that her cells would live forever; leading to a medical revolution and multimillion-dollar industry. Lacks was a black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at 30 years of age. However unbeknownst to the Lacks family, her medical struggles would lead to the breakthrough of several diseases. These cells formed what’s known today as the HeLa line and remains active today. A doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital took a piece of her tumor and sold these cells to several scientists across the world without her consent. Although she passed away in 1951, Lacks cells continued to help, by developing the polio vaccine and were fundamental in cloning testable content. Lacks family