How The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book written by Rebecca Skloot in 2010 that tells the story of Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line known as HeLa found in her cervical cancer cells in 1951. Rebecca Skloot first heard about Henrietta Lacks in a college biology classroom back when she was a teenager. Henrietta Lacks was a 31 years old black tobacco farmer who died of cancer, and without her or her family’s knowledge, a sample of the HeLa cell was taken from her and was used in medical researches. The HeLa cells were the first human cells to survive and multiply, and since it was taken has been used in scientific research all over the world, and have played a huge role in medical

“The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks” written by Rebecca Skloot exposes the truth about a colored woman, Henrietta Lacks, who died from cancer leaving five children and a husband behind. Before her death doctors took her cells,without her or her family consent, to do there own research and experiments. They discovered that her cells were immortal, they became the first immortal cells known as the HeLa cells..After the discoverment the Lacks family were never told that Henrietta Lacks cells were used, bought and sold. Through the HeLa cells the scientist had made money while Henrietta kids were mistreated and were in poor situations.It wasnt till 25 years later that the Lacks family found out about the HeLa cells doing miracles. Rebecca Skloot though “The immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” was able to explain the unethical situations that the Lacks family faced after Henrietta’s death.

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black tobacco farmer from Virginia and a mother of five. She died on October 4, 1951 at the early age of 31 from cervical cancer. Without her knowledge, cells from her cancerous tumor were taken. They were used to create the first human immortal cell line for medical research. HeLa cells as they are called have had a major impact on modern medicine such as the polio vaccine, cloning, in vitro fertilization and gene mapping. Even though Henrietta Lacks’ contribution to modern medicine was groundbreaking, she remained virtually unknown for years.

Rebecca Skloot’s book “The immortal life of Henrietta lacks” chronicles the life, death, and immortality of Henrietta lacks. Her name is Henrietta lacks but most scientists only know her as HeLa. She was a poor southern tobacco land worker who worked on the same land her enslaved ancestors did. Henrietta was a young black woman whose cervical cancer cells became one of the most important factors in bringing about the most revolutionary advancements in both medicine and science in the twenty first century. Author Rebecca Skloot goes on a hunt to find out the story and women behind the infamous cells. After only being a given a brief summary of where the cells came at the age of sixteen. With pique curiosity skloot began to look for more information about this unknown woman only to come short with little to no information regarding her background. Deciding to take matters in her own hands she embarks in a journey that not only revealed the moving story of Henrietta and her family but the struggle the family goes through in order to stay at terms with what the field of medicine has done.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) is a result of Rebecca Skloot’s discovery and findings devoted to Henrietta’s life story along with her family members that revived the real person behind tremendous scientific accomplishments sprung of immortal HeLa cells’ exploitation. The research of HeLa cells has changed various areas of medical study and stepped forward scientific breakthroughs that continues today. HeLa cells were central for developing the polio vaccine; exposed secrets of breast cancer and leukemia; lead to important advances in vitro fertilization, cloning, genetic hybrids, gene mapping in virology, HIV, HPV, tuberculosis, telomerase, salmonella, live cell transport, for profit distribution of cells, scientific standards, space biology and nanotech (Skloot 2). HeLa, “Goddess of Death” (Skloot 250), cells have been exposed to household chemicals, drugs, cosmetics, viruses, radiation, and biological weapons (Skloot 252). Following Henrietta Lacks’ death in 1951 “from a vicious case of cervical cancer” (Skloot 3), doctors began a massive production of trillions of HeLa cells each week. The produce, more than fifty million metric tons, of a HeLa factory has been bought and sold by the billions. In spite of all of this, Henrietta Lacks, the woman from whom HeLa cells came, stayed unknown to the public for a half of the century and buried in an unmarked grave. Even Henrietta’s family for many years stayed ignorant about what had been accomplished using their

Uncountable major scientific discoveries, such as, the polio vaccine and blood pressure medicines came from the same root: HeLa cells; for several years no one questioned where the cells came from or what its initials stand for, although numerous studies across the world used and bought these cells. Rebecca Skloot, the author of the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” performed a research investigating the origin of HeLa cells and the woman behind them. Based on her findings, the story imparted injustice, not only against Henrietta, but also her family. Given all benefits HeLa cells brought, anyone could guess the owner of the cells, Henrietta, was well compensated, nevertheless, the unfortunate reality is her cells were stolen.

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot follows the story of the famous HeLa cell line, introducing us to the woman behind these cells, the family she came from, and how her cells swept the field of science. This book tells the story of how race, poverty, and the practices used in the fields of science and medicine in the last 100 years has led to the many of the modern day innovations we have, all thanks to the HeLa cells.

In 2010, Rebecca Skloot published her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a result of her discovery and findings devoted to Henrietta’s life story along with her family members, and revived the real person behind tremendous scientific accomplishments sprung of immortal HeLa cells’ exploitation. The research involving HeLa cells has changed the landscape of medical study, leading to scientific and medical breakthroughs that continues today. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of breast cancer and leukemia; helped lead to important advances in vitro fertilization, cloning, genetic hybrids, gene mapping in virology, scientific standards, live cell transport, for profit distribution of cells, space

Sixteen-year-old Rebecca Skloot was sitting in a college biology class when she first heard of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells. In class, Rebecca saw how the HeLa cells were able to reproduce and “they became the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory” (Skloot 4). Henrietta Lack was also a black woman. Rebecca became very interested and wanted to know more, but at the end of class the professor told her that there this very little information on Henrietta. This spurred Rebecca’s interest even more. She began extensive research on this topic to satisfy this interest. We worked through graduate school and finally tried to reach out to the Lacks family for more information. It turns out that there had been some unpleasantness in the family history and it was challenging for them to talk about Henrietta. Once their stories were told, Rebecca put enough puzzle pieces of Henrietta’s life together, and she constructed a book entitled The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

The book of 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ' is about a mother that had die with a unknown cancers in which her cancerous cells stayed alive outside her body. Her family doesn 't knowns until many years later when reporters and doctors starts to talk about her mothers cells in world wide. Her family wants to learn more about her mothers cells but not many of the reporter and doctors are much help. Until Rebecca Skloots the authors of this book helps her family to understand more about Henrietta cells and helps the future Lacks family education. Throughout this book they were many themes that stand out, but what caught my attention the most were the lack of education, cells and tissue ownership, and the trust.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was a very hard book to put down, for so many reasons, and really opened my eyes to the unethical ways of medicine back in the mid 1900s. In some ways a discovery like that was imperative for us to make so many important breakthroughs in medicine and I’m thankful for everything discovered because of it, but I am also appreciative of the regulations that have been made, potentially because of this story, that don’t allow you to just take someone else’s cells and DNA and use it how you please without the individual or family of gaining anything for the contribution.

Cancer is experimented with HeLA on Patients without their consent. The work is done by Chester South Thames.

What exactly is Public Health? Public Health entails generating facts about the health status of a population. The population can be a community, a class or group of people, i.e., Male, Female, White, Hispanic, African-American, wealthy or not, and/or any of the above. Once facts are known empirically, steps to improve the health status of that group can be designed, tested and ultimately rolled out on a larger scale. In the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, there are multiple topics relating to Public Health policies (laws), research and education that are discussed and argued. Eventually, this changed Health Care into what it is to date. Throughout decades, without her knowledge, and with the use of her immortal, reproducing cancer cell line known as HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks along with various doctors and researchers changed the face of Public Health policy, research and education. The use of her cancer cells and the outcomes of various experiments and studies has been debated for a long time and causes people to question moral, religious and ethical factors.

Researches and doctors violated informed consent requirement they have to say to their patients. The Lacks family never knew what happened to their mother till years later. The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot the doctors and researchers took Henrietta’s cells without anyone's knowledge. The doctors took away her right of saying no because they didn't want to hear it. Henrietta’s daughter got talked into being tested for cancer, if though there wasn't a test for that. They took advantage of their patients to do research. According to Skloot Deborah said, “she’d heard that stories about Hopkins snatching black people for research, and sh read and article in Jet about the Tuskegee study that suggested doctors might

SWBAT read and analyze portions of the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and share their findings with their peers through a jigsaw activity.