Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. Henrietta’s mother passed away in 1924. She was sent to live with her grandfather. Henrietta shared a room with her first cousin David. They had their first son, Lawrence in 1935 when she was fourteen. Then they had their first daughter in 1939, Elsie, who was disabled. Henrietta and David then moved to Maryland and had three more children, David Jr., Deborah, and Joseph.

Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman, was born in Roanoke, Virginia on August first in nineteen twenty, her original name being Loretta Pleasant. Her name change happened on an unknown date. When she was four years old her mother passed away and so she then moved into her grandfather’s cabin, which she shared with her cousin David. In nineteen thirty-five when Henrietta was at the age of fourteen, she and David had their first child named Lawrence. Four years later Henrietta and David had another child by the name of Elsie. Two years later, in nineteen forty-one, Henrietta and David married. They later moved with their family to Maryland, where they had three more children by the names of Deborah, David Jr. and Joseph.

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.

Henrietta Lacks was born in Roanoke, Virginia on August 1, 1920. After 1924 when Henrietta's mother Eliza died giving birth to tenth child. Henrietta and her siblings where taken to her fathers hometown, clover. When all of the siblings arrived at clover they had to be divided and split up to live with different relatives in different homes. Henrietta ended up with Tommy Lacks, her grandfather and her cousin David Lacks also known as Day. As Henrietta grew older, she began to draw attention from he cousins Day and Joe. Since she had been sharing a room with Day ever since she got there she found herself pregnant with Day's child. At the age of fourteen she gives birth to her first child, Lawrence and at the age of eighteen she has her second

The National institute of Health, Rebecca Skloot, and John Hopkins Hospital have distorted Henrietta Lacks Legacy. In 1951, the Johns Hopkins Hospital took cervical cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks, and developed the HeLa cell line. Neither Henrietta nor her family gave the hospital permission to use her cells at the time. Her cells contributed to major medical discoveries, including the development of polio vaccine. Henrietta’s family was never compensated for the money that they made off of her cells. It was not until 1973 that her children discovered, by accident, that their mother's cells, now immortalized, had become a major boon to medicine and that many people had become rich from marketing them. Ron Henrietta’s

What if someone used your body or parts of your body for science without your permission. Patients rights is the right to keep anything medically safe and locked away from the public. The only people that would see it would be your doctor or anyone you grant to give that information to. People nowadays have that privilege to keep it iblprivate but back in the mid to the nineteenth century people didn’t exactly have that right to keep their information private. There was research conducted with people’s DNA that that person did not know about. Some tried to sue and get money from the doctors or scientists that worked on their tissues and made money off of them. But most people back then did not know that doctors had taken samples when they would be getting an operation done or to go and just get their blood

Bringing Henrietta to Life: Creating Dialogue on Disparities across Disciplines Henrietta Lacks was a woman who made an eye-opening breakthrough in medicine in the early 1950s. Her cells were the first immortal cells to be discovered which paved the way for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in-vitro fertilization, and more. Unfortunately, there are two sides to every story. Although, modern medicine would not be where it is today without Hela cells, Henrietta’s family continued to struggle with her legacy because of the health disparities associated with ethics, race, and medicine. Henrietta’s cells were taken without her knowledge and used to cure various medical conditions.

In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author, Rebecca Skloot, dives into a vast amount of information regarding a women named Henrietta Lacks, whose name is very popular in the medical world. Henrietta’s cells became the first immortal cells known to man, and have changed the way the medical world works. Skloot’s book also contains material about a Public Health problem, which became a great risk for the entire community. In general, Public Health is the process of preventing disease and promoting a healthy lifestyle for the overall community. Public Health has three main functions, assessment, policy development, and assurance, which all work together to help establish a healthy environment. In the book, the topic of bioethics came into play during a

During the 1950s, a cell line called HeLa was cultivated from a poor, African mother of five who died of cervical cancer named Henrietta Lacks. It was then mass produced for research and generated billions of dollars. Many medicinal treatments and breakthroughs, such as polio, were developed from this cell line helping billions of people to this day. Unfortunately, the woman who ultimately gave her life never received a single penny, nor her family. The Lacks family lived without insurance and still to this day has received no compensation. Given that companies and organizations, such as Microbiological Associates and the National Institutes of Health, have benefited tremendously from the cell line, they should compensate the Lacks family for it is the

African-American Henrietta Lacks was a mother of 5 children who was diagnosed with a malignant tumor of rather large size that was located in her cervix. This was said to be cervical cancer. She attended John Hopkins Hospital to be treated. She is famous for her cancer cells, HeLa. Dr. Gey’s took samples of each person’s cells who had cervical cancer who came to this hospital. Henrietta Lacks’ cancer cells were not like anyone else’s cells; they did not die in Dr. Gey’s lab. Her cells actually grew twice in size about every day. I do not think she was treated fairly because her family did not profit from all of the discoveries since it has had such a big impact on the medical field still today.

Another factor that played a significant role in Henrietta 's life was a combination of not only poverty, but racism too. The book calls into question the name Henrietta Lacks. “We are officially introduced to Henrietta as Loretta Pleasant. Henrietta, or also known as Loretta, grew up with eight other siblings, and an abusive father.” (Biogrophy.com) Henrietta spent most of her youth living with her grandfather and future husband. During this time in history, Henrietta along with other African Americans, were subjected to segregation. Her life was far from easy, she grew up as many African American children did during those times, working in the tobacco fields.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, is about a poor African American Women named Henrietta Lacks, better known as “HeLa” to the rest of the world, whose Cells taken, unbeknownst to her, revolutionized the medical field. Henrietta, originally named Loretta Pleasant, was born on August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. After her mother’s death when she was 4 years old, her father felt incapable of taking care of her, so she was given to her grandfather and raised an old plantation house with her fist cousin, whom she ended up marrying and having four children with. Her story really starts in 1951, after she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital because of what she described a “knot” inside her. Turns out she had adenocarcinoma of the cervix (cancer of the cervix) which caused the formation of many tumors. During the treatment of her Cervical Cancer, without her consent, two tissue samples of her cervix were removed. After examination of these samples, Dr. George Otto Gey observed something “never seen

Throughout the 1960’s medical health care was not as advanced and thorough like it is today. During the 1900’s, families were not as informed of their medical records than today due to a breakthrough in medical technology (Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). In past years, hospital experience turned out to be quite lengthy stays for some people and had given a redundant insult with no respect to a patient. Some people had not been as beneficial as white people have. These problems should not even exist, it is just physical discrimination against people of different color.

George Gey is wanted for the theft of Henrietta Lacks’s cells. Gey is the head of tissue culture research at John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He and his wife, Margret, work together in their own lab at the hospital. He is tall and skinny with a stiff posture from having spinal fusions.

What if Henrietta’s story appeared in the mainstream in 1951, instead of 1976? Would it help her case? Or would anyone care because of the color of her skin? Everyone’s point of view of African Americans were very different in 1951 from in 1976. The public interpretation would be very different if publishing Henrietta’s story in 1951 because of the changes like Jim Crow Laws, segregation, and if Rebecca Skloot would even be allowed to interview the Lacks family as much as she did.