Summary: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is an essential character in the story who provides more insight on the journey of attaining Henrietta Lacks’ recognition. Without her, the readers would not have been able to see the outlook of the struggles and hardships of Henrietta’s family. Scenes, like the faith healing on page 289, would have been lackluster if it hadn’t been for Skloot’s input on the actions of the characters first-hand which delved further on how they cope with the new information they are presented with. Also, her thoughts gives interpretations on the situations she encounters. Deborah constantly looks at Elsie’s pictures in her car and starts thinking about sad thoughts that Skloot, at one point, wants to

Skloot elicits pathos throughout the book by telling the emotional story of Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cancer, and how it affected her family. Henrietta

Her family had realized that Henrietta had suffered and died, but her cells lived on and that her cells have helped so many people. Henrietta’s son said “I just hope Hopkins and some of the other folks who benefited off of her cells will do something in honor of her and make right with the family”(Skloot, pg. 328). Henrietta is finally getting recognized, which brought unwanted attention to the family from the media, doctors, and researchers that wanted a piece of the HeLa gene line. That affected her daughter, Deborah negatively because she never really knew her mother, but when Deborah first heard of the book she was very excited that the world would finally get to know her mother’s story.

At this point, Deborah only wants to learn who her mother is besides her famous cells. Scientists have somewhat dehumanized Henrietta Lacks by naming her cells HeLa cells. This makes them sound like a lab experiment rather than a person which is what they’ve basically turned into. Deborah is not looking for revenge as would be expected, but instead wishes for her mother to be honored in the way she deserves. I think this takes an extreme amount of courage considering all the wrongs that have been done to her family. I think Deborah is one of the most righteous people i’ve heard of and deserves to be recognized. This passage makes me angry that the HeLa cell industry has made billions of dollars buts struggles to give anything at all to the person that made them rich. Furthermore, very few scientists have ever taken time to recognize Henrietta Lacks. It’s unbelievable that billions of dollars can save lives but can’t give a single penny to the family that made it all

In Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, she told the story of how a

Millennia old problems such as poverty, medical abuse, and ignorance pass through successive generations and will often never change. In Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the structure plays a crucial role in showing how such obstacles in the Lacks family live as eternally as the famous HeLa cells. Skloot uses her structure to entwine three separate storylines, all set in very different time periods, into a coherent narrative that demonstrates the real immortality of Henrietta Lacks and all that she left behind.

In “Henrietta’s Dance” by Rebecca Skloot, Skloot tells Henrietta’s story so that the average person will be able to understand, while in “Immortal Cells, Enduring Issues” by Dale Keiger, Keiger discusses Henrietta’s cells and wants to appeal to a scientific audience. Although science writers Rebecca Skloot and Dale Keiger both portray that the humanity of a patient should be an important part of medical research, Skloot’s narrative is more effective. She uses imagery and tone in order to reveal that the issues surrounding bioethics is a story that touches everyone. In “Henrietta’s Dance” Skloot uses imagery to illustrate that Henrietta was human and not a test subject. In the passage it says, “The local undertaker met Henrietta’s body at the station where, less than a decade earlier, she had boarded her train to Baltimore.

Deborah Lacks is introduced by Skloot using an illustrating a description of Deborah's adolescence. Deborah is faced with many challenges in her life like not knowing who her mother really was. On page 206, chapter 25 the text says “And Deborah started handing out newsletters about her mother and the cells, saying, “I just want y'all read what's on this paper! And tell everybody! Bring it around . We want everybody in the world to know about my mother.” This shows how much Deborah cared to know about her mother and her cells. Even though her family didn't have much interest in them, Deborah took matters into her own hands and collected information to find out more about her mother.

Out of the numerous recurring themes throughout the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, two themes stood out to me. Those themes showed that there are several characters that are searching for answers or struggling to come to terms with their emotions. Two characters have a particularly difficult time with one of these two themes. The first being Deborah Lacks, the daughter of Henrietta Lacks, she is searching for answers pertaining to her mentally challenged and deceased aunt, Elsie. Deborah starts her quest at the mental hospital where Elsie was living at “Nineteen fifty-five was the year they killed her..I want them records..I know it wasn’t good..why else would they get rid of them?” (Skloot 269). Deborah is obviously upset by

Skloot’s initial interest in Henrietta was born out of sheer curiosity, but turned into a genuine want to help Deborah know her mother and understand what happened to her. Skloot’s genuine care for people can be insinuated in her description of the time she spent with Deborah, as she says, “Each time I visited, we’d walk the Baltimore Harbor, ride boats, read science books together, and talk about her mother’s cells” (Skloot 251). The book took a backseat to helping Deborah. She wasn’t concerned with publishing her book quickly and making money quickly; she truly wanted to help Deborah understand what happened to her mother. She handled Deborah’s erratic bouts of paranoia with grace, patiently and calmly waiting for her to come around

This book had an entertaining comedy twist. The interactions held between Rebecca and the members of Henrietta’s family members were often either comical or serious. At rare times, they were tragic. Deborah Lacks, one of Henrietta’s daughters had helped with the research for this book, had become close with Rebecca Skloot during that time. When she died, it invoked emotion from the readers, offering an unexpected bittersweet

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.

Written by Rebecca Skloot, the novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, utilizes the three major rhetorical appeals in order to convey her purpose to the readers. In attempt to expose the HeLa cells, Skloot is successful in creating many complicated views on the story such as trust. The main purpose of this book is to inform readers in effort to create discussion about the ethics behind the tragic story of Henrietta Lacks through her expert manipulation of ethos, pathos, and logos. Within the first few pages, ethos is established heavily.

Although she was taken from the world too soon, Henrietta Lacks was a warm hearted woman, and though unbeknownst to her, she would pave the way for the medical field and greatly expand our understanding of one of the nation’s

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.