How Is The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Racist

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.

When the cells finally began growing in Gey’s lab it was seen as a huge advance in the world of science, seeing as no one had succeeded beforehand, this was a great accomplishment on his part. However, Henrietta was never told of this or how important her cells had become, she simply continued living without knowing that the cancerous cells inside her were continuing to grow despite receiving “treatment” from the doctors. Her only treatment was a small patch of radiation sewn directly into her cervix on the area where the tumor had appeared, after some tests showed that the tumor had disappeared she continued with her normal life of farming, raising her children, and enjoying life. Henrietta never complained about any side effects of the radiation, however, it eventually would make her infertile and cause her skin on her torso to turn black.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a true story of a poor, Southern African-American tobacco farmer who died in 1951 at the very young age of 31 years old from cervical cancer. Little did she know that cells harvested from her tumor, which were obtained without her consent have lived on and on and became one of the most important tools in medicine today. Despite Henrietta’s story being full of legal and ethical issues, the story was one filled with success and anguish. Success for science as her cells served as advancement in medical research and development; yet was sorrowful for Henrietta and her family. This story occurred during a time of segregation in the United States, when Henrietta Lacks believed she

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

In 1951 there was a young black lady who was named Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was a tobacco farmer in Clover, Virginia. Her mother died giving birth and her father moved the family to Clover, where the children were distributed among some of the close relatives. In January of 1951 she went to John Hopkins hospital, which was the only place close to her that treated black patients at the time. Lacks described a “knot” in her stomach that ended up being cervical cancer. During her treatments two samples from her

Throughout her book, Rebecca Skloot shared the story of Henrietta Lacks and how her cells became so important to science. This narrative involves racism, injustice, and ambition. Henrietta, for instance, alike the majority of African-Americans, was a poor tobacco worker, who lived in a small town called Clover. Blacks did not have the same benefits as white people. One significant difference was medical care: hospitals separated colored and white people using different floors one for whites and one for blacks. Evidently, the white section had more advantages; instead, some blacks could not even afford seeing a doctor and when they did, “it was understood that black people did not question white people’s

It was inevitable that Henrietta wouldn’t enjoy going to an institution where people of her race felt unwelcomed; she was understandably scared. The finding of her cancer tumor is revealed at the very end of chapter one. During the doctor’s exam he discovered an enormous tumor in her cervix. What was more surprising was that there was no record of the abnormality during her delivery of her son three months prior; which meant it had “grown at a terrifying

She works closely with Deborah to unveil the story of Henrietta’s life and the life of her sister Elise, who was sent to Crownsville Hospital as a young girl for treatment of the “negro insane”. Skloot and Deborah end up going to Crownsville where they found that Elise was treated very poorly and underwent harsh treatment at the hospital. Throughout this journey of unveiling Henrietta’s life, she discovers that medical research was unethical during those times. Doctors would perform cruel experiments on humans and she even heard stories of “night doctors” who would kidnap black men and women in Maryland to perform such

The maltreatment of Henrietta Lacks, like other African Americans, is primarily due to the historical derogation of the racial group since they are perceived as subordinates within America, including the medical world. African Americans are branded as inferior in the fields of gynecology, biology, and genetics due to America’s historical degradation of African Americans seeping into the medical world. The gynecological practices presented within the text showcase the lack of basic ethical considerations of women, especially African American women since they received maltreatment due to both their race and gender. For example, the doctors who stole Henrietta’s cells felt that giving consent was not even worth it because the “colored women” do not pay for their treatment so stealing cells was their form of payment, but the hospital still had Lacks fill

TeLinde spoke with Dr. George Gey about growing Henrietta’s cells due to the increasing research in cervical cancer. Henrietta went into the hospital to get radiation treatment and during the admissions process she was asked to give consent to the staff to perform any operative procedures they deem necessary in the proper surgical care and treatment of her (Skloot, 31). Many will argue she gave consent but the consent form she signed says nothing about research. Patients were often part of research trials without their knowledge. There were consent forms, like the one Henrietta signed, but the issue is there was no one checking if patients understood what they were signing.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an amazing, real life story about an African American woman in 1950’s United States who contributed to science without ever knowing, but written from the author, Rebecca Skloot’s perspective as a scientific investigator. In the beginning of the book we learn a lot about Henrietta from her rough childhood to her marriage and five kids. From the start of this book it is obvious that Henrietta knows she is sick. She found a lump on her cervix so she went to the free clinic for African Americans at Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was determined that this “knot” that Mrs. Lacks found was a tumor. During the process of testing and treating the tumor with radium xray, Dr. George Gay had some of the tumor’s tissue

“Henrietta just nodded and said, ‘Lord, it just feels like that blackness be spreadin all inside of me,’” remarked Rebecca Skloot, author of the nonfiction novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This quote not only personifies the pain of cancer patient Henrietta Lacks, but it stands as a metaphor for the African-American race during the mid-twentieth century. Through the story of the Lacks family, readers are able to thoroughly understand the culture, medicinal practices, and attitudes of the African Americans and scientists of the time.

Her husband takes her to John Hopkins hospital in East Baltimore. This hospital was much farther away than the ones closer to her home, but this was the only hospital that offered treatment to black patients. The doctor who was on duty is Howard Jones, who listens to Henrietta’s problems as well as take note that she has a long list of untreated medical conditions.

When I first heard about the book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", I thought it was just a reading assignment when I was in high school that I had to complete for a grade. As I began reading I became particularly interested in Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells. In "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", Rebecca Skloot talks about Henrietta Lacks and how her cells were taken without her permission, and how her family suffered afterwards. Skloot shows how medicine and science were seen back in the 1950's compared to now.

None of the men knew that the “bad blood” which coursed through their veins was contagious. None understood how the disease was transmitted; no one explained to them that congenital syphilis was passed on from female to fetus. It was an experiment based on deception, a characteristic that it retained for the next forty years. Through a historical analysis of the experiment several questions arise, particularly the issues of the men’s participation in the experiment and the black professionals who witnessed the study. Why did these Black men take part in this study? Why did the Black health professionals not challenge the study? The answers to these questions are interconnected and lies captive in a term Jones calls racial medicine (Jones 15).