The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

Throughout the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many social justice issues were presented. One of them was racial discrimination, specifically in the medical world. Race was perceived in an extremely different way than it is now; it is clearly evident how it impacted the medical care that Henrietta Lacks received and what happened with the family as her cells were spread and studied. Today the situation would be handled differently. There are not segregated hospitals with people saying that since a person does not have enough money to pay for a hospital visit, taking tissues and cells from the body is okay. Racial discrimination in the medical world has changed a great deal since the time that the HeLa cells were first taken.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a novel written by Rabecca Skloot that outlines the life and story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks and her families struggle to discover the truth. Henrietta Lacks was and African American women who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of thirty. A doctor at John Hopkins Hospital examined Henrietta and a biopsy of the cancerous tissue was retrieved. Henrietta received treatment for her cancer, but the cancer was too aggressive and she soon passed away at age of thirty-one, but her cells continue to live today. Henrietta Lack’s cells were unlike any other humans cells ever examined. The cells were able to grow, multiply, and divide outside of the human body in a lab (Skloot 2010). This was a major scientific discovery. Henrietta’s cells, more commonly known to the public as HeLa, aided in the creation of several scientific discoveries and are still used today. It is because of HeLa we have the polio vaccine, a better understanding of cancer, and cells in general. The cells have even been sent into space and have been exposed to nuclear testing and to toxins (BigPicture). Although Henrietta Lacks’s cells have done a lot good, many ethical issues surround her case such as privacy issues, monetary compensation, exploitation, and cell contamination to name a few. Perhaps the most important and controversial ethical issue in Hennrietta’s case resides around consent, or the lack there of.

The story “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” that’s written by Rebecca Skloot. The author talks about a story happened in the 1950’s, and it’s effects still happening. The aspect that controls the story is power of privilege. In all places, in all times, power of privilege is specified for people who called elite. They get this power to control situations, but it does not mean they all deserve handling this power. This power created to control everything and improve or develop it. It is just considered under the actions that seem like what Skloot mentions in the story, but this power is related to all things in our life. Now, let’s go back to the story, and see the effects of that power under the wrong usage. At that period of time, the power of privilege was controlled by whites. The separation that was between blacks and whites, and the arrogance that some white people had encouraged them to insult black people. Dr. George Gey is the one of the doctors who used their power to do something no one at that time knew it’s consequences, which is taking the cells. On the other hand, Henrietta whose cells were stolen with out her permission. Finally, the results mostly affected Deborah which is Henrietta’s daughter.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a true story of a poor, Southern African-American tobacco farmer who died in 1951 at the very young age of 31 years old from cervical cancer. Little did she know that cells harvested from her tumor, which were obtained without her consent have lived on and on and became one of the most important tools in medicine today. Despite Henrietta’s story being full of legal and ethical issues, the story was one filled with success and anguish. Success for science as her cells served as advancement in medical research and development; yet was sorrowful for Henrietta and her family. This story occurred during a time of segregation in the United States, when Henrietta Lacks believed she

The non-fiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, details the happenings and life of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman and tobacco farmer who became a medical miracle in the 1950’s. The book is written in an attempt to chronicle both the experiences and tribulations of Henrietta Lacks and her family, as well as the events that led to, and resulted from, research done on Henrietta Lacks’ cells. Henrietta was a very average African American woman in this period; she had only a seventh-grade level education, and followed traditional racial and gender roles by spending her time has a mother and caretaker, as well as working on farms throughout her life until the involvement of the US in World War II brought her and her husband, “Day” Lacks, comparatively better work opportunities in industrial steel mills. However, after her death in 1951 Henrietta became much more than average to doctors at John Hopkins when the discovered that cells extracted from her cancerous tissue continued to live and grow much longer than any other tissue samples. Further investigation and isolation of these thriving cells led to the creation of the first ever immortal human cell line in medical history. The incredible progress in medicine made possible by Henrietta Lack’s tissue cells were not without downfalls, though. The treatments and experiences received by Henrietta and the effects it had on her and her family demonstrate both racial and gender

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

The scientific community’s careless mistreatment of the Lacks family began with dehumanizing Henrietta’s cells in the very first lab. Generalizing people can especially be easy when one is working with their cells in a lab. The many scientists working on Henrietta’s cells must have found it easy to separate the cells from the person and reduce them to tools to aid them in the task at hand. This view may be harmless when it comes to the individual scientist, and the individual cell, but this view extended to the entire Lacks family and caused them much harm. “Meanwhile, Victor McKusick and Susan Hsu had just published the results of their research in

Imagine having no rights in life. Imagine one day you get sick, and you go to the hospital to get better, but you get taken advantage of. How would all that make you feel? Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman. During her time, women didn’t have equal rights like men did, and African-Americans didn’t have equal rights like white people did. Since Henrietta was an African-American woman she had it rough, there were times that everyday tasks were a struggle. In 1951 she was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. She was treated at John Hopkins University, where doctors didn’t do all they could even if they said that was the case, and were Doctor George Gey took her cells from her cervix without consent. I watched the Law and Order episode titled “Immortal”, I found it to be extremely similar to a book I read titled The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot even though the show said in the beginning that this was not based on a true story.

First, the waver that Henrietta signed at John Hopkins gave permission for her doctors to (according to Skloot) (2010) “perform any operative procedures…that they deem necessary in the proper surgical care and treatment of _________________,” (pg. 31). Henrietta’s cells were taken, but not for treating her cancer. Second, because of her race and economic status, Henrietta was an easy target. . In 1951, at John Hopkins, when Henrietta received treatment at a colored operating room. Because of this segregation, The treatment was not as well and the doctors had the ability do take advantage of her but Henrietta did not have much of a choice. In the operating room, Richard TeLinde did not ask her permission to take her tissues, Even if he had, Henrietta would not have been able to say no. Skloot (2010) describes this as a time of “benevolent deception” (pg. 63), where the doctors hid information from the patients at the hospital and patients didn’t question doctors, especially when the doctors were white and the patients were black. This is what made Henrietta such a target at John Hopkins. Additionally, no one thought to tell Henrietta afterwards what George Gey had discovered about her special

The 1950s are very different times in America, especially for blacks that are seeking medical care from hospitals or clinics, where racial discrimination is still quite widespread. The struggles that blacks face at this time period are only made worse by the poor treatment from the doctors and the sheer disregard for black patients, in comparison to white patients, “But several studies have shown that black patients were treated and hospitalized at later stages in their illnesses than white patients. And once hospitalized, they got fewer pain medications and higher mortality rates” (Skloot, 64). Henrietta’s life is greatly affected by the racism in

In 1951 there was a young black lady who was named Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was a tobacco farmer in Clover, Virginia. Her mother died giving birth and her father moved the family to Clover, where the children were distributed among some of the close relatives. In January of 1951 she went to John Hopkins hospital, which was the only place close to her that treated black patients at the time. Lacks described a “knot” in her stomach that ended up being cervical cancer. During her treatments two samples from her

This idea was blatantly ignored with the treatment of Henrietta and many others. Henrietta was a living, breathing, human being, that deserved equivalent treatment. She was instead, dehumanized into cells, her privacy invaded, and her family permanently damaged from the experience. Henrietta was not immortal. In reality, “Henrietta died at 12:15 a.m. on October 4, 1951” (86). From the unethical treatment she received to the blatant disregard for empathy with regard to her deathly illness, Henrietta was maltreated. John Moore’s case exposes the widespread nature of this problem. “It was very dehumanizing to be thought of as Mo,” claims Moore (201). “...I was Mo, I was the cell line, like a piece of meat” (201). John Moore endured the same as Henrietta. Both viewed as abstractions, their truths ignored. They both, however, hold a triumph. They contributed to the betterment of society, and helped to advance medical practices and cured countless

After her death in 1951, for six decades, Henrietta Lacks did not exist in the eyes of the society, but her cells did. How? Well, the answer is quite simple. HeLa Cells are the first immortal human cells. These cells never die and multiply every twenty-four hours. After spending 10 years to perfect her first book, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot essentially captured the life, the death, and aftermath of Henrietta Lacks’ life. With controversial issues regarding science, ethics, race, and class Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey. From the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells, from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover,

As further described by Skloot’s book, Henrietta Lacks was a beautiful woman with “walnut eyes, straight white teeth and full lips” also a wife, mother, and friend to everyone around her (Skloot 68). A few months after her last baby was born she saw abnormal bleeding in which she went to see a doctor. Her doctor found a lump inside her cervix, then he suggested to attend Johns Hopkins Hospital, since

Eventually, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and treated with radium and x-ray therapy. Unknowingly there was a part of Henrietta’s tumor that was taken by George Gey which was sent to his lab to be cultured. Gey was hoping to grow a large number of cells that would continue to grow so they could do their experiments on human cells. None of Henrietta’s family knew the sample had been taken and they didn’t inform them when the cells began to grow incredibly fast either. Gey had discovered the first immortal cell line called HeLa which eventually would be distributed all over the world for scientific research.