The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Final Paper

Henrietta Lacks is not a common household name, yet in the scientific and medical world it has become one of the most important and talked names of the century. Up until the time that this book was written, very few people knew of Henrietta Lacks and how her cells contributed to modern science, but Rebecca Skloot aimed to change this. Eventually Skloot was able to reach Henrietta’s remaining family and through them she was able to tell the story of not only the importance of the HeLa cells but also Henrietta’s life.

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

Henrietta Lacks died never knowing the impact her life would have on the world of medicine. A poor, black woman living in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1950s, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died only nine short months after her diagnosis at the age of thirty-one. The mother of five children, Henrietta most likely died thinking her family would be her legacy. Little did she know her doctor at John Hopkins hospital, George Gey, had taken some of her cells before she died. With Henrietta’s cells, Dr. Gey was finally able to achieve a goal he had been working toward for decades – creating the first line of immortal cells (Freeman). These cells have been used for countless scientific research and have solidified Henrietta Lacks’ place

n this unit, students will demonstrate their understanding of the cell cycle and mitosis, gathering evidence to support explanations for appropriate cell function and reproduction. Students will first compare normal and cancer cells in different stages of mitosis using a virtual lab. Students will then read portions of the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in order to gather evidence about a specific type of cancer. They will then share more information on causes and risks for various forms of cancer – gathered from research and from an interview of a person impacted by cancer – with their classmates. Finally, students will use this information to develop an explanation, with evidence, for why certain types of cancer are more prevalent

In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. She has composed this biography of Henrietta Lacks to inform her readers about the hard reality that the Lacks family went through. In order to grasp a better understanding about this novel we will first uncover some details about Henrietta and her cells. Next, we will discuss how she came from a large family and that they were originally from Virginia. Finally, we will examine what she did after she moved to Baltimore and what happened after the move throughout the first two chapters.

This is a book that tells a story of an African-American woman and the Scientific journey of her cells, it also goes in depth about how her daughter came to find out about her immortal cells. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is divided into three layers and each part discusses different event that happened during the course of Henrietta’s life, death, and immortality. If the story was written in a chronological order would it had made it easier or harder to understand the more important things?

“The scientific enterprise is all about failure; I mean, you learn so much from failure. And you learn almost nothing from success.” This scientist is stating that one cannot gain any knowledge without failing. This is not true. Once one obtains success one now knows exactly what to do to achieve success, thus opening doors and further experiences for them. The novel “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, due to the success of tissue culture researcher Dr. George Gey can further dispute this quote. His success in tissue culture led to further discoveries, and became one of the most important breakthroughs in modern medicine. The world was

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a story about a young African American woman whose cancer cells were taken from her and grown. They became one of the most important tools in medicine. It’s also the story about how her family couldn’t afford health insurance. This book yields a horrifying look on America’s true values: economic status, religion, and discrimination. Poverty stricken people were the subject of discrimination in the United States.

Elie Wiesel once stated: “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 sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” This means that every aspect of a person is important because they all have a story to tell which is unique. They all are much more than the stories told about them. Everyone has faced challenges in their life whether it be emotionally or physically, but have also have had achievements. In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, both the scientific community and the media are guilty of having viewed Henrietta and her family as abstractions. She was an African American women from whom a scientists took cancerous cells found in the tumor located in her cervix. The cells were named HeLa and were grown to an inconceivable number and became

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks went to John Hopkins Hospital because of pain and bleeding in her abdomen and was diagnosed with cervical cancer. During one of her radiation treatments, doctors took samples from Henrietta’s cervix without her knowledge to see if her cells would grow in culture and it did. Her cells were the first immortal cells to grow in culture. From there everything changed. Henrietta’s cells were used to create the polio vaccine, they went in space to what would happen to human cells in zero gravity, and many more. But as HeLa cells were bought, sold, and used for these scientific researches her family did not receive any money from it. Many people think that they should receive financial compensation but they should not.

1. What enticed me the most and caught my interest from the beginning was how the work in this class was not hesitant to address real-world issues. Throughout the periods of time in my former English classes, the problems we discussed and subsequently wrote about were not ones that were applicable to my life, or any ordinary life in general; they were issues that coincided with the lives of outliers, making them difficult to write about and relate to. This class, however, has thoroughly analyzed a vast array of topics that are incessantly debated about in our world today, from how poverty impacts people, how informed consent is of utmost importance in the medical industry, how abortion is viewed by many, and scores of other subjects

Ethics, in our society, are the moral principles that govern our behavior, dictating what is right from wrong. The specifics of ethics changes as values in our society change and evolve. This occurs in Rebecca Skloots book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. One major reoccurring theme in the book is the lack of informed consent and autonomy. Fortunately, now there are safeguards which protect human rights in regard to health care and research. The Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, now part of the Department of Health and Human Services, created The Belmont Report, which is one such safeguard establishing principles for all human research (USDHHS, 1979). This paper will discuss the ethical issue of informed consent within The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the disregard to parts of the Belmont Report, as well as compare the role of the nurse in charge of Henrietta’s care versus the standards of care set for modern nurses.

This research paper is based on the findings from the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. What you will read and come to know is nonfiction. I wish I could put the pictures of what I have seen and read together here for you to perhaps get a better understanding. A story based on not Henrietta’s life being that of immortality, but rather cancer cells removed from her body without her knowledge. These were the first cancer cells to reproduce outside of her body. You will come to know about Henrietta, her cancer, her cells, and her immortal life. Perhaps we can all learn to appreciate life in greater means of appreciation after reading and knowing the life and immortal afterlife of Henrietta Lacks. You will learn about a woman, who like us, had a family, and ended up not being able to truly live life to its fullest. Making us all realize just how cancer is and the amazing research that came from being able to reproduce her cells. Not just for cancer but for various other illnesses that plague so many of us. My hope is that you take away from this a better understanding of a time we do not know, for the ups and downs of science and the possibility of immortal life.

The theme I have selected for my book is “...Despite one’s best effort, humanity will not always return the favor. Life is not a balanced scale; life is a dance of give and take that can leave one person on top of the world and another buried six feet under.” This theme can be linked to my poster’s slogan: “It is possible to be chained by the stories we have yet to tell,” because the chains that bound the Lacks family were the cause of the unjustness they were subjected to. The image I selected represents my slogan and the characters in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks because they felt locked up, left to rot as they wondered what had happened to their mother. The chains are the lies, the secrets, and the manipulations that the Lacks family

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, was a nonfiction story about the life of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Henrietta did not know that her doctor took a sample of her cancer cells a few months before she died. “Henrietta cells that called HeLa were the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory” (Skloot 22). In fact, the cells from her cervix are the most important advances in medical research. Rebecca was interested to write this story because she was anxious with the story of HeLa cells. When she was in biology class, her professor named Donald Defler gave a lecture about cells. Defler tells the story about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells. However, the professor ended his