Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Analysis

Rebecca Skloot begins The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with a quote from Elie Wiesel from The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code by stating, “We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own source of anguish, and with some measure of triumph” (Skloot n.p.). Clearly, the author chose this quote to portray that every human being should be seen as valuable and not objectified in the eyes of others. However, in 1951, a time when the Jim Crow Laws enforced racial segregation in the South, this mindset excluded all colored patients, including a woman named Henrietta Lacks. The Immortal

There are two story line were presented in first chapter of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The first story line describes how Henrietta Lacks fought against cancer. The second story line describes how Rebecca Skloot dug out Henrietta Lacks’ story. Henrietta Lacks was born in Roanoke, Virginia, on August 1920. Loretta pleasant was her name when she was born. Her mom died when she was four years old. Her father send her to her grandpa Tommy Lacks. He is a tobacco farmer. In tommy’s house, she met David Lacks who is going to be her husband. They married in 1941. In the same year, the Second World War outbreak, the local steel plant need more people, Day start to work at Sparrows steel plant. Everything was all good until Henrietta found a bossing that

Sympathy develops from the image of those suffering. The heart cannot bear to see others in pain, and ultimately wants to help. In Rebecca Skloot’s contemporary biography, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot uses pathos to connect the reader emotionally to Deborah Lacks. The emotional connection helps the reader to understand Deborah’s stress and pain.

Ethical principles were not followed during the retrieval and research of Henrietta Lacks’ cells. The doctors at Johns Hopkins University took Henrietta’s cells while she was under anesthesia without her knowing or having her consent. Although many doctors were taking cells from their patients without their consent does not make taking Henrietta’s cells ethical. Researchers began using Henrietta’s cells (HeLa cells) to help make new medical discoveries such as the polio vaccine without her or her family knowing about it. After she died huge medical discoveries were made with her still living cells; some of these discoveries include cancer medications, major vaccines, and gene mapping to name a few. The family did not know about the use of her

In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by the American author Rebecca Skloot. The life of a woman named Henrietta Lacks is presented to the readers. This African- American woman became the source of many advances in modern medicine. Thanks to her cells many illness were cured and vaccines were made to prevent fatal diseases from affecting the humans. However, the controversy of her story resides in the fact that samples of her cells were taken from her without her permission or her family’s. This opens the debate whether if taking someone’s cells to experiment with is ethical or not.

In the story “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” a woman is known for her immortal cells not for herself. Henrietta Lacks was a woman who went into the hospital because she had a knot on her womb. The knot was a tumor and a biopsy was done and it proved it was cancer. While having her procedures the doctor took a piece of the knot and sent it to Dr. George Gey. Dr. Gey cultured her cells and they became fast growing and healthy. These cells would start new scientific advances that not many people had even heard of to that day. This was Henrietta’s story and how she became “immortal” from her cells. Henrietta may not have known what her cells would achieve but she may not have given them if she had known. This is her story

Death is the action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or

A major issue that is profound in the novel, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” is the ethical issues that were present before and during the time of HeLa cells. Rebecca Skloot, the author of the novel, explores this major issue throughout the book. Ethics is an important factor in this novel because there is a major change in how research was done before and how it is done now. Skloot puts emphasis on the importance of the ethical issues by providing a variety of stories and examples beginning with Henrietta Lacks tissue being taken without her knowledge. Within the ethical issues, there is also the concepts of informed consent, privacy, and deception.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a non-fiction book, and sometimes impersonal, like when the author is talking about the medical facts of Henrietta's cells. However, it is also very personal at times, like when she's talking about the Lacks family. In one scene (pgs. 283-285), the author chooses to swear in her narration and it makes the scene very powerful.

After reading the story of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, I was astounded by the acts of the doctors in this book. Their research, advanced medicine and saved the lives of many people. However, what was the cost of these advances? The doctors did studies on patients without their knowledge and disregarded their patient’s privacy. They exploited people’s grieve and fear and found loopholes in informed consent to get what they wanted. Although, these doctors did what they did for the sake of science, research, and humanity, it is scary to think that only 65 years ago, what these doctors did was not considered unethical.

The end of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks leaves the reader reeling with anger at the unfairness that the family has had to endure, and the fact that yet another generation has passed away with no resolution to their suffering. The book focuses on helping the Lacks family finally understand and come to terms with their misconceived beliefs surrounding their mother's death and the scientists who “stole” her cells. The book’s main source is Henrietta's daughter, Deborah. Deborah has spent much of her life obsessing over and being haunted by her mother’s cells; this book was her opportunity to show the world the women behind the famous HeLa cells and to get the justice that the family deserves. After forming an incredibly strong bond with

As human, people are supposed to be born with certain inalienable rights that everyone is entitled. One of these is the right to human dignity, which everyone should have. Yet, there are occasions where humans have been robbed of their rights as human beings just because they have had the misfortune to die. The concept of an inalienable right is the basis for the American constitution and should include rights to the body as well as the spirit. The case of Henrietta Lacks was a milestone for medical research and has potentially led to curatives for many illnesses both in the United States and around the world. However, the woman behind this research was never aware of her remarkable body, nor was her family members allowed to reap any of the benefits of their lost relation. Henrietta Lacks went to the doctor because she was ill. She was found to have terminal cancer and eventually died from her illness. During her treatment, cells from her body were taken. They were found to be mutagenic, or different because of a mutation from normal human cells. The story of Henrietta Lacks is one where human beings have to question where the line draws on their rights. In this case, researchers did not have consent to take her cells nor did they protect her dignity by providing her with doctor-patient confidentiality. In Rebecca Skloot's non-fiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author writes about the woman of the title whose cells were

A section of this book was dedicated to Henrietta’s life, which was interesting to say the least. Henrietta persevered. At the beginning of her life, Henrietta grew up on a tobacco plantation, and was raised with a tremendous amount of cousin’s and family members. Personally, I was bothered by the fact that her husband was her cousin, but for that family it was normal, even though it deviated from what would be rational by today’s standards. At another time, when she became an adult, her family and her decided to move to Baltimore. Surprisingly, she spent the rest of her life there, eventually getting cancer and dying. The cancer spread quite fast, and it had extremely surprised me. Personally, I expect that the exposure to the extreme

This book was a constant roller coaster for my mind, shortly after I opened the book and read the first few chapters I was hooked. I read this book constantly, on my lunch breaks at work, in the bathtub, making breakfast and everywhere inbetween. The opening chapters concerning Henrietta and Day’s childhood together made me feel an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, I remember being a child and running around in my cousin’s large field for hours of the hot summer days. Although I didn’t marry my cousin, or have to drop rocks into a swimming hole to scare off cotton mouth snakes, I did heavily relate to the opening chapters. Reading of Henrietta’s life was my favorite section of the book, she’s very inspiring, even when sick she was strong willed and hard working. The saddest thing was reading of Henrietta’s agonizing deterioration, from strong and seemingly healthy to doubling over in pain and groaning in pain unable to find a medicine to sit comfortably. Sadie seeing her mother dead for the first time made me realize the

In the essay by Dhali Lama, Lama talks about how our morality should have something to do with our advancements in technology, and how we should use moral components such as compassion when we make a new development or technology. New technology such as cloning, genetic plant modification, and changing the DNA of a human embryo in order to get the " ideal" baby can have some long lasting effects on us, because each and everyone of them has some sort of potential dangers of their technologies. When we apply these technologies we should let our moral compass decide if we are going to far with what we are doing, and if it can have a lasting affect on us in the near