Summary: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is the story of Hela cells and the women and family behind them. HeLa cells are the cells that have helped scientists all around the world discover cures and vaccines that have saved thousands of lives. But before they did all those things, they were inside a woman, named Henrietta Lacks, and were taken from her without her knowledge. Her family would not know about her cells until years after her death and millions of dollars in revenue gained from the HeLa cells. At the time doctors did what was considered common practice but did they cross a line? Or were the amazing scientific achievements enough to excuse the violation of personal privacy? Despite good intentions doctors should never have taken Henrietta’s cells without her consent, and furthermore her family deserves compensation for the work those cells have helped accomplish, and the sometimes horrible circumstances they have had to deal with because of the cells.

The main ethical issues in this case is that researches at Johns Hopkins Hospital used Henrietta’s cell in multiple researches and send her cells to other researchers around the world without her family’s consent. Moreover, the Lackes themselves were used in medical research without informed consent, and Henrietta’s medical records were release to journalists without her family knowing.

In the example with the HeLa cells, a great debate was raised when the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was published. The debate centered around the lack of information of where the cells came from, who should have known about the original harvesting, and the lack of compensation for Henrietta’s family once the cells started generating income. Also discussed was the tendency of the medical community to

While performing the treatment Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr. collected Henrietta’s normal and cancerous cell and sent them to George Gey, who was the researcher collecting any type of cells that the hospital would provide for his research, this was all done without Henrietta’s knowledge. In the 1950’s segregating still existed, and “Many scientist believed that since patients were treated for free in the public wards, it was fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment.” (Pg. 30) Henrietta had a painful death in 1951, due to all the tumors that had spread throughout her body, leaving her 5 children without a

Much medical advancement would not have been possible without cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks. While these HeLa cells are infamous in the medical community, the story behind them was barely known by any until Rebecca Skloot uncovered it.1 Information about Henrietta Lacks uncovers a history of consent not being asked for, and certainly not being given, but because of the cells, medical discoveries were made without her family’s knowledge.1 It brings to light the idea that while cells are a part of a person’s body, once they are out of the human body there is no more ownership. Without informed consent though, is it still owned by the person whose cells they are?

Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 of cervical cancer, leaving behind a husband, five children and some cells taken from her without her permission. These cells continue to revolutionize the scientific field today and have played an integral role in some of the most important advances in medicine: cloning, chemotherapy, gene mapping, the polio vaccine and in vitro fertilization. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks answers a lot of questions regarding the Lacks family, but also poses a number of questions regarding ethics, consent and how far society is willing to go to make medical advances.

In the novel, the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Henrietta was a young black woman of 5 children whose cancerous cells were taken out without her knowledge. Those cells later became one of the most important tools in medicine. The case of John Moore vs. Regents of the University of California has similar ethical issues as present in the novel.

Rebecca Skloot’s bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, begins with a quote from World War II concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel, “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” (Wiesel qtd. in Skloot n. pag.). This quote serves as a preview of the book and its underlying moral purposes, as Henrietta Lacks and her family are continually treated as objects without rights to their privacy and without regards to their worth or feelings. The dehumanization of the Lacks family by the media and scientific community not only resulted in consequences for the family, but influenced society, as well.

Within the novel The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot, the exponential growth of research due to the introduction of HeLa cells is exemplified through the vast scientific breakthroughs achieved. Before the presence of HeLa cells scientist had an endless amount of questions and theories but were unable to test their hypothesis due to lack of a perfect test subject. HeLa cells grew in almost every medium and most importantly, they grew fast. HeLa cells were especially useful when trying to study viruses, and the effects of certain antibiotics and other medicinal substances. Part 3 of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks provides multiple instances where the use of HeLa cells was detrimental for medical research. One major use for Henrietta's cell was the medical

In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, we learn about a woman and her families story. Her name is Henrietta Lacks and she gets mistreated by doctors who use her cells without permission and experiment on them. Both doctors and media have abused the Lacks family and treated them more like objects than people. Dr. TeLinde, who was Dr. Howard Jones’ boss, took care of taking Henrietta’s tissues and cells at Johns Hopkins. During this time, he was one of the top cervical cancer researches. He took Henrietta’s cells and gave them to research, unknowing of what he was really doing. Michael Gold, author of A Conspiracy of Cells, published details from Henrietta's medical records and autopsy report without permission from the Lacks family.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks focuses on many issues that Henrietta and her family have faced over the years resulting from the discovery of HeLa cells. One such issue that was recurrently present was the ethical issue of informed consent, or the lack of it, in the Lacks’ case. In the beginning when Henrietta was first being treated with radium to kill her cancerous tumor, her primary doctor, Dr. TeLinde, took a sample of the tissue and sent it to Dr. Gey, head of tissue

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.

Rebecca talks about whether or not people should have the rights to their own tissues. She points out two issues, consent and money. In the past there was no informed consent, so the doctors and researchers felt free to use tissues in whatever way they wished, with little concern for patients' rights. Nowadays there is a different system, and it's required by the law to ask for a patient's informed consent.mThe money issue is a question of whether doctors should be required to tell patients if their cells or tissues are going to be used for commercial research, and what rights those donors should have. Later on, “scientists sequenced Henrietta Lacks's genome and made it public, without asking the family's permission” which was just another way in which the family was violated and looked over (Silver). Apparently Henrietta didn't get her rights, and neither did her children. Any way we look at it, if the family had received any benefits from the cells, it

While Henrietta's cells were taken without her knowledge, when she passed, it was not until three decades later that her family was informed that her cells existed. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean that it is ethical. In order for an informed consent to be considered valid, consent must be knowingly, voluntarily, and competently given. None of which were implemented for Lacks’ case. Informed consent needs to be in place before researchers use human beings in

The effect the discovery and creation of the HeLa cells made on the science community and Henrietta’s family had a domino effect. Both had different opinions and beliefs on the matter; this led to some difficult questions asked of the family and of the medical community. Due to the new and advanced methods of experimentation, the HeLa cells made to to the field of science, the scientific community and the media failed to remember that Henrietta and her family were not abstractions but actual people. Rebecca Skloot, however, took into account the Lack’s family, she inquired both the history of the HeLa cells as well as the Lacks family, treating them as actual people with inalienable rights.