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Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot: An Analysis

Decent Essays

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

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