Examples Of Social Injustice In The Book By Rebecca Skloot

She is very vivid in describing the events happening, especially with her medical terminology. In addition, she captures the horror in Henrietta Lack’s condition to truly describe the magnitude of the situation. However, Skloot is most successful when she is met with the surviving members of the Lacks family. “Henrietta’s family – particularly Deborah – and their lifelong struggle to make peace with the existence of these cells, and the science that made possible,” (Skloot, 2010, pg7) catches the readers emotions to help understand another side of the story. Developing a major ethics debate, Skloot’s implementation of pathos reveals the heavy gravity behind the

In the time that Henrietta was being treated for cancer, black people were treated very differently that white people. They were separated into ‘colored wards’ and given less treatment, or treatment on a lower quality, than

Throughout the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many social justice issues were presented. One of them was racial discrimination, specifically in the medical world. Race was perceived in an extremely different way than it is now; it is clearly evident how it impacted the medical care that Henrietta Lacks received and what happened with the family as her cells were spread and studied. Today the situation would be handled differently. There are not segregated hospitals with people saying that since a person does not have enough money to pay for a hospital visit, taking tissues and cells from the body is okay. Racial discrimination in the medical world has changed a great deal since the time that the HeLa cells were first taken.

Grey and his actions. Zakariyya holds onto to these damaging emotions which causes him to act out in rage and violence. Deborah and Zakariyya have very different ways of reacting and handling their emotions, however all the emotions they are feeling are valid in their obscure and painful situation. Henrietta’s life is the prime example of the level of racism in the healthcare system in the 1950s. The struggles that blacks faced during this time period were only made worse by the poor treatments from the doctors or even the complete disregard for their black patients. According to Skloot the issues relating to blacks seeking medical care could include being hospitalized later in stages of their sickness, fewer pain medications, and higher mortality rates. These facts that came from the racist healthcare system greatly influenced Henrietta’s life, by causing her more pain since the doctors kept sending her away without the appropriate treatment. This surely wouldn’t have happened if Henrietta was a middle class white woman. No one can know for sure, but perhaps giving Henrietta the proper care and treatment from the beginning would not only ease her suffering, but also her

Can you imagine going to the doctor and doing whatever that doctor told you was the best for you without asking questions? Well that is what patients did in the 1950s, especially African Americans, who were still being victims of racial prejudice and segregation. In this book, the author, Rebecca Skloot tells us about Henrietta Lacks, a 31 year old African American woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and trusted her doctors, who took a sample of her cells without her knowledge. These cells would help in scientific discoveries that helped millions of people. Henrietta died of cancer and her family is devastated when they find out that the cells had been taken without permission, and that they were being sold for profit.

Rebecca Skloot, the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, vividly described a series of disturbing events that took place. Henrietta was a woman who helped changed the face of medicine. Her cancerous cells never died. Scientists and doctors experimented with them and created new treatments to various diseases. The disturbing events that occur after the death of Henrietta are crucial if her story is to be told correctly. Some of these events include sexual assault to one of Henrietta’s daughters, the beating of Joe, Henrietta’s son, as a child, and torture to people with illnesses like Elise, another one of Henrietta’s daughters.

This is also very prevalent today. This connects into the issue of health care. In the past, citizens in poverty could not afford health care. Today, there are other options for these people to receive the care they need despite their unfair positions. Within the book, "The public wards at Hopkins were filled with patients, most of them black and unable to pay their medical bills. David drove Henrietta nearly twenty miles to go there, not because they preferred it, but because it was the only major hospital for miles that treated black patients. This was the era of Jim Crow-when black people showed up at white-only hospitals, the staff was likely to send them away, even if it meant they might die in the parking lot. Even Hopkins, which did treat black patients, segregated them in colored wards, and had colored-only fountains (Skloot 15)." This quote directly shows that people from African American Heritage were treated very unfairly during this time. This affected the world today during the civil rights movement, which pushed the equal treatment of minorities for basic needs. Various policies have been set to change the treatment of individuals over time in this nation; for example, Medicaid. Also in the book, there is a quick sketch of Henrietta's life that allows the reader to make the connection between her education and social status and the way her life turned out. In the book it reads, "Sixth or seventh

The treatment of African Americans in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks demonstrates the lack of ethics in the United States health care system during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the impression that medical doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital were solely injecting radium treatment for cervical cancer, Henrietta Lacks laid on the surgical bed. During this procedure Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr. shaved two pieces of tissue from her vagina, one from a healthy cervical tissue and one from the cancerous tumor, without Henrietta’s prior knowledge. After recovering from her surgery Henrietta exited the door marked, “Blacks Only,” the door that signified the separation between White and African-American patients. Had Henrietta been White, would the

The story took place in Baltimore in the early and mid 1900s, when prejudice was prominent and black people were not treated fairly or equally by white people. Moreover, the entire black community was terrified of night doctors, who would kidnap black people for scientific testing, and the book states that “fear of the night doctors only increased in the early 1900s, as black people migrated north to Washington D.C., and Baltimore” (166). This shows that the setting of the story had a huge impact on the book, as black people were taken advantage of routinely against their will. This is what happened to Henrietta, as she had to drive miles and miles to go to the only hospital around that would serve black people just to have her cells were taken without her consent by white scientists and used for the benefit of others. The author also uses many changes in point of view in the story to provide more background and portray the many different ideas and views of different people. For example, Skloot starts off telling the story from Henrietta’s point of view, showing her family and her struggles through her time with cancer. Then, she switches over to the eyes of a scientist who was working with Henrietta’s cells in a lab and working to grow the cells to benefit the scientific world. Finally, the author tells the story through her own eyes as she had to acquire information about Henrietta’s personal life through Henrietta’s family and the struggle she went through to get it. The setting of the story and the changes in point of view used by the author improve the story

In the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” the author, Rebecca Skloot, discusses many important points. The main point of this informative novel is how doctors from Hopkins hospital captured cells from an African American woman to study possible outcomes to many new ideas. This main point unfolds an analysis of how this event made many new discoveries, immortal memories, and prevented Henrietta’s family from varies negative situations. Firstly, this event helped unfold many new discoveries to medicine and to the medical revolution.

Black patients were also given fewer medicines and had high mortality rates (Skloot, 64). If Henrietta had been white, she would’ve been hospitalized at an earlier time and received more medicine to have a better chance of living. Also, if she was middle or upper class she would not have been receiving treatment from John Hopkins because she would’ve had health insurance and able to receive care at another

After her death in 1951, for six decades, Henrietta Lacks did not exist in the eyes of the society, but her cells did. How? Well, the answer is quite simple. HeLa Cells are the first immortal human cells. These cells never die and multiply every twenty-four hours. After spending 10 years to perfect her first book, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot essentially captured the life, the death, and aftermath of Henrietta Lacks’ life. With controversial issues regarding science, ethics, race, and class Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey. From the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells, from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover,

The author liberally uses Pathos to characterize Henrietta’s suffering, using descriptive imagery to convey the negative effects of her treatments. Additionally, the author uses Parallelism to place emphasis on the invasive procedures that she had endured. Quotes from the medical staff, beyond affirming her suffering, also demonstrate a clearly dismissive attitude towards Henrietta, referring

Throughout the novel, we learn about the medical treatment that Henrietta received as an African American woman in the 50’s. Additionally, Skloot writes about the experiences that she had when contacting the Lacks family to learn about Henrietta. While the reader learns about

While today’s “patients [have] one thing going for them that Henrietta didn't: They [are] alive. And the dead have no right to privacy-even if part of them is still alive,” (Skloot 211) history’s ethical debate regarding medical racism remains a social issue. When patients experience racism, they may be unable to defend themselves if they are incapacitated by medical professionals. Due to patient negligence and bias, the health care provider’s poor treatment breaks the trust of minorities. As shown in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and treatment of Henrietta Lacks, doctors and researchers have failed to inform the participants correctly. Both occurrences highlight medical racism because of the historical maltreatment of minority groups. Now, many