The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

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.

The focus of my research paper is to inform readers whom Mrs. Lacks was and the injustice that happened with her and to prove she deserves recognition. In order to entirely grasp my topic one must know who Mrs.Lacks was. For this reason I’m using The Lacks Family’s official website that introduces her. This will help me introduce the topic in my research paper.

What exactly is Public Health? Public Health entails generating facts about the health status of a population. The population can be a community, a class or group of people, i.e., Male, Female, White, Hispanic, African-American, wealthy or not, and/or any of the above. Once facts are known empirically, steps to improve the health status of that group can be designed, tested and ultimately rolled out on a larger scale. In the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, there are multiple topics relating to Public Health policies (laws), research and education that are discussed and argued. Eventually, this changed Health Care into what it is to date. Throughout decades, without her knowledge, and with the use of her immortal, reproducing cancer cell line known as HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks along with various doctors and researchers changed the face of Public Health policy, research and education. The use of her cancer cells and the outcomes of various experiments and studies has been debated for a long time and causes people to question moral, religious and ethical factors.

Human cells are known to regenerate every seven years, but what if they regenerated every second? In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot, talks about a woman named Henrietta Lacks, she suffered with cervical cancer for years, but what she didn’t know is she had a rare case of a cell line called The Hela Cell Line. These cells are the first human cells that are continuously grown in culture. These studies are similar to the ones in the book Survival of the Sickest written by Sharon Moalem, explaining how your body reacts in severe weather and ruthless circumstances. In this book, it also touches on the topic about how diabetes helped people survive in the Younger Dryas ice age. The

People lie. The tendency to lie seemed like a natural instinct to the doctors and researchers who treated Henrietta Lacks. Lies always lead to suffering. In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks; a contemporary biography, Rebecca Skloot built a sad and depressing in response to how lies cause pain and suffering; thereby she argues for medical patients and their families.

The remarkable story of Henrietta Lacks was just the beginning of successful cell culture: a process by which cells are grown in a laboratory under controlled conditions. Prior to this, researchers had attempted to cultivate human tissue in the lab, but failed. Through the pain and anguish the Lacks family experienced, a new era in the scientific world was born. As a black woman in the fifties, she had the least resources available to her in terms of medical care. When she got sick, there was only one hospital that admitted black people, and she was kept in a separate colored ward. Due to the fact that cell culture had never been successful, there were gaps in the knowledge of cancer treatment. Therefore, while the doctors thought they were curing her, they actually were killing her. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, aside from the horrific death of Henrietta and the mistreatment of her family after the fact, hones in on the relationship between Rebecca Skloot, the author, and Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah. They have their ups and downs, but nearing the end of their journey there is familiarity between the two and a steadiness that resembles mother and daughter. Skloot explores every aspect of the Lacks family and includes the sadness and hopefulness expressed by all. She also writes copiously about the scientific significance of Henrietta and her particular situation.

In the novel “The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks” we explore into the world of HeLa cells and the woman behind these cells that created the medial revolution and multi million-dollar industry. Henrietta Lacks was a poor black tobacco farmer who went to the doctors for a knot she felt in her womb and had her cells taken from her that turned out to be extremely important but what came with the medical revolution was the controversial issue of race and poverty that stricken Henrietta Lacks and her family and how her or her family any received any money from these medical revolution using her cells before and after her death many years

She was a poor tobacco farmer and mother of five, born in southern Virginia in 1920.

In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Henrietta the purpose of the book is to tell the story of Henrietta Lacks, her illness, and how she completely changed medicine. The speaker is the author, Rebecca Skloot a prolific freelance writer. The audience is a wide variety of readers, since the book is extremely popular and is now often taught in schools and universities. The subject is Henrietta Lacks, a woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. and HeLa, the line of cells taken from Henrietta that were the first line of cells to reproduce and survive in the lab indefinitely.

SWBAT read and analyze portions of the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and share their findings with their peers through a jigsaw activity.

In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by the American author Rebecca Skloot. The life of a woman named Henrietta Lacks is presented to the readers. This African- American woman became the source of many advances in modern medicine. Thanks to her cells many illness were cured and vaccines were made to prevent fatal diseases from affecting the humans. However, the controversy of her story resides in the fact that samples of her cells were taken from her without her permission or her family’s. This opens the debate whether if taking someone’s cells to experiment with is ethical or not.

It was due to their race and lack of education that they had no idea what scientists and the media were talking about when they said that Henrietta’s cells were used for science in fact, they thought that Henrietta herself was still alive out there somewhere. It is quite a sad point in the novel when Deborah admits that she does not even really know what a cell is. No one in the scientific community took the time to sit down and explain thoroughly what had been going on. On account of this, the Lacks family did not care so much for white people, especially reporters and the scientific community. They believed that white people had their proper education and many freedoms that blacks did not receive during this time. Rebecca Skloot was the only person to tell the Lacks family how important Henrietta was, as well as explaining to them all about what was happening to her cells and what they were being used for. In order for the family to fully understand, it had to go beyond science and get into a more spiritual realm, one that they could relate with. Gary Lacks, Henrietta’s nephew and a preacher, says, “He died for us that we might have the right to eternal

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Henrietta’s family has had many hard times throughout their lives. Each member of the family has had their own hardships, but they were all affected by the death of their mother. Henrietta died of cancer and her cells were taken for research which caused the family major problems years later. Each of her children struggled in their own ways after her death because of care-takers, and abusive husbands. This family has been through so much in their lifetime that no one can understand what they have felt unless they have lived through it as well.

The experimentation on human beings has always been controversial in medical science. In the film, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017), begins with Rebecca Skloot, a freelance writer, contacting Deborah Lacks about the story of her mother Henrietta (Wolfe & Dean). Henrietta was an African American woman who died of cervical cancer; her cells, however, are still around to this day. Henrietta’s cells are unlike any other human cells as her cells can replicate every 24 hours in a Petri dish and scientists have used her cells in much medical research for many years (Wolfe & Dean). Also dubbed the HeLa cells, these cells helped advance medical science in the following: finding a cure for polio, disease research, gene mapping, including

“The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks” written by Rebecca Skloot exposes the truth about a colored woman, Henrietta Lacks, who died from cancer leaving five children and a husband behind. Before her death doctors took her cells,without her or her family consent, to do there own research and experiments. They discovered that her cells were immortal, they became the first immortal cells known as the HeLa cells..After the discoverment the Lacks family were never told that Henrietta Lacks cells were used, bought and sold. Through the HeLa cells the scientist had made money while Henrietta kids were mistreated and were in poor situations.It wasnt till 25 years later that the Lacks family found out about the HeLa cells doing miracles. Rebecca Skloot though “The immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” was able to explain the unethical situations that the Lacks family faced after Henrietta’s death.