The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Analysis

Although Henrietta lacks and John Moore have contributed a lot to the science community their stories has raised many ethical issues concerning the privacy and consent of a patient. Similar cases might not occur so often nowadays because we have established laws that protect a patient's privacy and acknowledges them before making any

When Henrietta signs the form, she is unaware of the types of procedures that doctors can perform under her “consent” or the damaging effects the operation could have on her body, seeing as doctors never clarified the possible side effects of her procedure. In reference to Henrietta’s treatment, the author states, “Toward the end of her treatments, Henrietta asked her doctor when she'd be better so she could have another child. Until that moment, Henrietta didn't know that the treatments had left her infertile”. Furthermore, this quote demonstrates the harmful effects of poor communication between patient and doctor, in that Henrietta had been ill-informed of possible side effects before the operation. In addition, if Henrietta had been aware of this knowledge, she may have opted for a different treatment plan or refused treatment, which may have changed the outcome considerably. While Henrietta did sign the consent form agreeing to any necessary procedures, she never imagined that her cells would be used to create a multi-million dollar industry for research, all without the knowledge or consent of her or her family. While consent forms today still contain minor flaws, they have improved greatly since Henrietta’s time to ensure the patient’s rights are

In both "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" and "The Lives of a Cell" they discuss cancer and how through the use of cells,we could create the right medicine. In "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" the author talks about the immortal cell line and how doctors took it without her permission. Henrietta's cells have made history in the advancement of not only cancer treatment but other illnesses.The doctors that cut out small fragments of Henrietta's cells didn't even ask for consent.Most people believe the doctors didn't see Henrietta's as a person that's why the doctors believed they did not need consent. Whether due to ethnic reasons we do not know, but we do know that Henrietta's cells still live on today and her body was not her own.

Rebecca Skloot is a writer who met the Lacks family whilst investigating the origins of HeLa Cells. She helped the Lacks family in order to win their trust and actually talk to them about their life with Henrietta while she could still breathe. Rebecca’s book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is a story that tells about the legacy of Henrietta Lacks, life, death, and immortality.

The problem of poor education in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks plays an important role in two distinct ways. Firstly, the lack of education in Henrietta’s family gave rise to the notorious deception by the medical professionals at Johns Hopkins who interacted with the cells; namely, had Henrietta and/or her family been more knowledgeable, a more careful approach to her treatment could have been taken without the prospect of physicians taking advantage of them. This is unsettling, because what if Henrietta declined the extraction? What would have happened to medicine without her cells and the research following their replication? This is not to argue that she was not wrongly treated, but to pose a very important question involving the persistence of essential research: what accomplishments have been done without the patient knowing of their contribution? Ideally, after the unveiling of Henrietta’s story, the answer would be none. This pushes the level of complexity even further, because even though what happened was strictly ethical for the utilitarian, Gey undoubtedly deceived the family in doing so; one may want to dislike Gey, yet his actions led to a myriad of useful discoveries in the medical field. Secondly, the absence of a

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, is a book about an African-American woman, Henrietta Lacks, who had cervical cancer in the early 1950s. Henrietta went to John Hopkins hospital, one of the only hospitals to treatment African-Americans, they derived part of her cancer cells from her cervix and tried to keep growing her cells for research to try and discover a cure for cervical cancer. They have tried this on many patients before, but Henrietta’s cells were special and kept growing, while the other patient’s cells would die. However, Henrietta Lacks and her family had no idea about the doctors taking her cells and medical records and sending them to other doctors around the world. In Skloot’s book there are many ethical

Public health is defined as a science that promotes and protects the health of communities through education and research. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” speaks about many research opportunities that were aided by the help of the HeLa cells, which transformed into many major parts of the modern public health system. The research and treatments created was a tertiary approach aimed to manage certain diseases and to control further disability in the community. However one of the major obstacles in using and multiplying the HeLa cells was how ethical the process was. Many regulations and guidelines that those in the public health industry now abide by came from the controversial studies that stemmed form the HeLa cells. Without the bold

The perception of what is right and wrong is always changing because of history. In particular, laws in the past were considered just, but as years passed people began to question the extent at which these laws were just. Various medical laws and bioethical issues pertaining to Henrietta Lack’s cells being stolen are discussed in Rebecca Skloot’s non-fiction work The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. A question Skloot addresses in the book is, “Wasn’t it illegal for doctors to take Henrietta’s cells without her knowledge? Don’t doctors have to tell you when they use your cells in research?” (Skloot 315). In her nonfiction work The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Skloot employs authoritative warrants to argue that while it was not illegal

In Henrietta Lacks’ case, she nor her family were aware of the value of her cells. While biotechnology companies have made billions off of her cells, Henrietta’s family were ostracized from the entire business. However, Henrietta did not give informed medical consent explicitly for her doctors to sell or profit from her cells. Regardless of this, her doctors manipulated a vulnerable black woman suffering from cancer. Skloot states that “...segregation was law, and it was understood that black people didn’t question white people’s professional judgment” (Skloot,63). This is compelling evidence which shows that Henrietta had no other choice for her medical care. Regardless of this, even at John Hopkins hospital, Henrietta was often treated as a second-class citizen in comparison to white patients. Moreover, her doctors preyed on this vulnerability and manipulated her. By doing this they took away a valuable part of her, which she could have used for her own gain. Now, Henrietta’s family continues to suffer decades following her death. In all, this proves that patients should have a right to their bodies, to prevent their own tissue from being used without their informed

In the mid-1900’s as opposed to today’s world, consent was not needed for tests to be performed on one’s body and used for experiments or research. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, focuses on one of the most famous medical breakthroughs which used cells taken from Henrietta Lacks, an African American cancer patient, without her consent. Henrietta had Stage I Cervical cancer and was being treated at Johns Hopkins hospital. Henrietta was treated as a science experiment; she went through harsh forms of radiation and her cancer cells were extracted from her body and used for research. George Gey was the first to discover that her cancer cells were unique due to the fact that they never died.

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

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

In 1951, a poor black tobacco farmer, named Henrietta Lacks, had her cells taken for a Hopkins’ doctor’s scientific pursuit. Little did Lacks and the doctor, George Gey, know that the cells rapidly multiplying in a petri dish in the tissue culture lab would fuel the exploration of some of the most important medical discoveries of the 20th century. While bioethics, poverty, science, faith, and medical developments are important issues that dictate the effects, motivations, and consequences of character’s actions, in the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, racism is still the most prominent theme in the story.

Author Rebecca Skloot did a fantastic job describing the racial politics and economic aspects surrounding the Henrietta Lacks case. What surprised me most was the contrast between the Johns Hopkins doctors and Lacks family following Henrietta’s death. While the educated Dr. George Gey and his team propagated millions of HeLa cells and laid the foundation for what later became a multibillion-dollar cell culture business, the Lacks family, especially the children, suffered in poverty and because of abuse. Specifically, while Gey shipped HeLa cells “around the country” (Skloot 95) and Tuskegee Institute churned out billions of cells, Ethel fed the Lacks children just one “cold biscuit” per day (111). With her mother gone, Deborah became an easy

In 1951, doctors took cell samples from an African American cancer patient named Henrietta Lacks without her knowledge or consent, and these cells became the first immortal cell line to be grown in a laboratory, leading to pivotal advancements in medicine, genetics, and cell culture. Rebecca Skloot tells the Lackses’ experiences with medical malpractice in her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The bestseller has become widely known for its unwavering devotion to delivering the facts truthfully. Skloot’s honest portrayal of the story sheds light on unethical medical research and human experimentation in the mid to late twentieth century caused by scientists abusing the trust and privacy of their patients.