Upon first reading this passage, I had to stop and marvel about what it meant. After pondering the absurd meaning of this casually written sentence, I had to stop and take a break for a while because all the thoughts that came with this were starting to make my brain hurt. At this point in the book, the author, Rebecca Skloot is explaining how she first became curious about Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca’s professor is trying to express the significance of cells but is having a hard time connecting cells to something easily understandable. To people who are usually used to seeing everything through the bigger pictures, it is hard to dive deeper to understand all the minuscule parts the everything that help them function. It almost makes the cells taken from Henrietta Lacks not such a big deal. How could cells so small possibly …show more content…
At this point, Deborah only wants to learn who her mother is besides her famous cells. Scientists have somewhat dehumanized Henrietta Lacks by naming her cells HeLa cells. This makes them sound like a lab experiment rather than a person which is what they’ve basically turned into. Deborah is not looking for revenge as would be expected, but instead wishes for her mother to be honored in the way she deserves. I think this takes an extreme amount of courage considering all the wrongs that have been done to her family. I think Deborah is one of the most righteous people i’ve heard of and deserves to be recognized. This passage makes me angry that the HeLa cell industry has made billions of dollars buts struggles to give anything at all to the person that made them rich. Furthermore, very few scientists have ever taken time to recognize Henrietta Lacks. It’s unbelievable that billions of dollars can save lives but can’t give a single penny to the family that made it all
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
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
In Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010), the main purpose for Skloot to write the book was to inform the world and tell the story of Henrietta Lacks. How her cells were taken without neither her or her family’s consent, still being used today, helping to cure diseases and being grown in petri dishes all over the world. It tells the story of the HeLa cells and it puts a face to the name and a family, showing that this person saved millions of people without any acknowledgement or recommendation that this was an actual person who did have a life and was not just cells. Rebecca Skloot’s intended audience are those who are ready to listen, it is a book for anybody to pick up and not be expected to know what everything
When I first began reading the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, I expected it to only be about the science behind HeLa cells, which I didn’t find particularly exciting. Except, I was proven very wrong. I have not been able to put this book down, for Rebecca Skloot is a remarkable writer who entices the reader with the emotional story of Henrietta Lacks and her family. It is true that there were quite a few scientific studies included within this book, but they never dampened the adventure. If anything the studies were integrated in such a way that I feel they were needed in order to understand all of the perspectives. Reading all of the scientific advancements made using HeLa cells left me happy, but also led me to question how justifiable it was. These researchers took Henrietta’s cells and used them without her even being aware of their actions. I believe the original intent of the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was to humanize and give Henrietta and her family credit for the advancement in science that her cells, the HeLa cells, contributed; thus leading me to my conclusion that the advancement in science using HeLa cells is not justifiable because of the harm inflicted on both the family and society.
Racism is immortal just like Henrietta’s cells it will always be around. People would do anything to be the first to discover something. At the end of the day it’s all about the money. The Mississippi appendectomies and the Tuskegee experiments were similar in the way that the government forced treatment upon minorities without consent. Henrietta’s case was different than Mississippi and Tuskegee because the doctor in Johns Hopkins didn’t experiment on her actual body but on her cells without consent. Henrietta’s case the Tuskegee experiments and the Mississippi Appendectomies are all different cases in different locations but serve the same purpose which is to take advantage of poor and uneducated minorities to
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 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, was a nonfiction story about the life of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Henrietta did not know that her doctor took a sample of her cancer cells a few months before she died. “Henrietta cells that called HeLa were the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory” (Skloot 22). In fact, the cells from her cervix are the most important advances in medical research. Rebecca was interested to write this story because she was anxious with the story of HeLa cells. When she was in biology class, her professor named Donald Defler gave a lecture about cells. Defler tells the story about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells. However, the professor ended his
Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia. Lacks died of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951, at age 31. Cells taken from her body without her knowledge were used to form the HeLa cell line. Lacks's case has sparked legal and ethical debates over the rights of an individual to his or her genetic material and tissue.
When the family expressed concerns about privacy, the scientists removed the sequence from the Internet. Hudson and other NIH leaders then met with the Lacks family. Together, the family and the NIH came to an agreement. Researchers can use the HeLa genome by applying to the NIH for access. A group of scientists and Lacks family members review the applications. From now on, when a scientist publish a research conducted using HeLa cells, it must include a thank you note to the Henrietta Lacks and her family for their everlasting gifts to science (Barone 2). Science has used HeLa cells in many ways. For example, HeLa cells are used to study HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, HeLa cells prove that HPV can cause cervical cancer, there is a vaccine that protects against some strains of the virus now, and HeLa cells are also tested to see how quickly they can absorb nanoparticles, which can suggest new methods for delivering drugs to cancer cells. It’s crazy that Henrietta is technically alive after being dead for 60+ years. Her cancerous cells continue to thrive and multiple till this day, around the world. Her cells have help further the medical field, such as find vaccines and doing further studies for HPV and HIV (Barone 3-4). I’m so happy that Henrietta’s family and Henrietta get the acknowledgement they deserve, but still very disappointed that
The theme I have selected for my book is “...Despite one’s best effort, humanity will not always return the favor. Life is not a balanced scale; life is a dance of give and take that can leave one person on top of the world and another buried six feet under.” This theme can be linked to my poster’s slogan: “It is possible to be chained by the stories we have yet to tell,” because the chains that bound the Lacks family were the cause of the unjustness they were subjected to. The image I selected represents my slogan and the characters in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks because they felt locked up, left to rot as they wondered what had happened to their mother. The chains are the lies, the secrets, and the manipulations that the Lacks family
This passage is interesting because Henrietta will be living forever, literally. There are over billions of cells of her. She has traveled the world in such a short time and also has been a part of nearly every new medical vaccine or cure there will ever be. It just goes to show you how science works. One person can change everything.
It’s difficult to speak without conveying personal opinions unless you’re actively focusing on what’s you’re about to say. This can be more easily avoided in writing, but some form of bias is still found in almost every written work, whether that bias is boasted in a written statement of opinion, or hidden in the authors abstinence from sharing certain information with readers. In her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot successfully presents the story of HeLa cells in an unbiased way by discussing more than one side of the story, communicating the story as accurately, and honestly as possible, and by only fabricating or altering data when necessary.
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.
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.
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.