Analysis of Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

1282 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: HeLa cells

In February 2010, author and journalist Rebecca Skloot published a book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," which included the stories surrounding the HeLa cell line as well as research into Henrietta Lacks' life. In 1951 a poor young black women, Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer and at the time was treated in the “colored ward” or segregated division of Johns Hopkins Hospital. The procedure required samples of her cervix to be removed. Henrietta Lacks, the person who was the source of these cells was unaware of their removal. Her family was never informed about what had been accomplished with the use of her cells. The Lacks family has not received anything from the cell line to this day, although their mother’s cells have been bought and sold by many. This bestseller tells the stories of HeLa and traces the history of the cell while highlighting the ethical and legal issues of the research.
Henrietta’s name is associated with HeLa cells after a doctor took her cells without her knowing (the name derives from the first two letters of her first and last names). It is told that George Gey, a cancer researcher at Hopkins was longing to study cancer cells however, the method failed because the cells were studied outside of the body and died. But Henrietta’s cells did not die. In fact they continued to replicate making what we now know as the HeLa cell. The sample of Henrietta’s malignant tumor was offered to researchers who saw the cells continue to multiply in culture, and they still continue to grow up to this day. Scientists remain stumped why the HeLa cells survived whereas others didn't. It has been proposed that the immortality of her cells is due to the enzyme telomerase (Reveron, 2011). Telomerase pre...

... middle of paper ...

...m these advancements that are from human body parts. Instead, it is imperative to honor and preserve those who have made these interventions possible

Works Cited

Keiger, D. (2010, June 2). Immortal Cells, Enduring Issues. Johns Hopkins Magazine. Retrieved from http://http://archive.magazine.jhu.edu/2010/06/immortal-cells-enduring-issues/
Reveron, R. (2011, December 12). The immortal life of cells: HeLa's contributions to the Nobel Prize. Retrieved November 5, 2013, from http://immortalcells.blogspot.com/2011/12/helas-contributions-to-nobel-prize.html
Skloot, R. (2010). The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers.

Smith, Stephanie. (2013, August 11). Henrietta Lacks’ family finally gets say in genetic destiny. Can we control our own?.CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/07/health/henrietta-lacks-genetic destiny/index.html?

Show More
Related

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

    1365 Words  | 3 Pages

    ILofHL Pages 56-86 Summary The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is the result of years of research done by Skloot on an African American woman with cervical cancer named Henrietta Lacks. Cells from Lacks’ tumor are taken and experimented on without her knowledge. These cells, known as HeLa cells, are the first immortal human cells ever grown. The topic of HeLa cells is at the center of abundantly controversial debates.

    Read More

  • Summary: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    An abstraction can be defined as something that only exists as an idea. People are considered abstractions when they are dehumanized, forgotten about, or segregated and discriminated against. The scientific community and the media treated Henrietta Lacks and her family as abstractions in several ways including; forgetting the person behind HeLa cells, giving sub-par health care compared to Caucasians, and not giving reparations to the Lacks family. On the other hand, Rebecca Skloot offers a different perspective that is shown throughout the book. Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks describes the trials and tribulations the Lacks family has gone through because of HeLa cells and shows how seeing a person as an abstraction is a dangerous thing.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by: Rebecca Skloot has a lot of themes, but one that is most relevant in my opinion is the racial politics of medicine. Throughout the chapters, there were examples of how Henrietta, being African American, prevented her from receiving the same treatment as the white woman sitting right next to her in the waiting room. The story begins with Henrietta going to Johns Hopkins Hospital and asking a physician to check a “knot on her womb.” Skloot describes that Henrietta had been having pain around that area for about a year, and talked about it with her family, but did not do anything until the pains got intolerable. The doctor near her house had checked if she had syphilis, but it came back negative, and he recommended her to go to John Hopkins, a known university hospital that was the only hospital in the area that would treat African American patients during the era of Jim Crow. It was a long commute, but they had no choice. Patient records detail some of her prior history and provide readers with background knowledge: Henrietta was one of ten siblings, having six or seven years of schooling, five children of her own, and a past of declining medical treatments. The odd thing was that she did not follow up on upcoming clinic visits. The tests discovered a purple lump on the cervix about the size of a nickel. Dr. Howard Jones took a sample around the tissue and sent it to the laboratory.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

    1147 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta Lacks. In the early 1951 Henrietta discovered a hard lump on the left of the entrance of her cervix, after having unexpected vaginal bleeding. She visited the Johns Hopkins hospital in East Baltimore, which was the only hospital in their area where black patients were treated. The gynecologist, Howard Jones, indeed discovers a tumor on her cervix, which he takes a biopsy off to sent it to the lab for diagnosis. In February 1951 Henrietta was called by Dr. Jones to tell about the biopsy results: “Epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, Stage I”, in other words, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Before her first radium treatment, surgeon dr. Wharton removed a sample of her cervix tumor and a sample of her healthy cervix tissue and gave this tissue to dr. George Gey, who had been trying to grow cells in his lab for years. In the meantime that Henrietta was recovering from her first treatment with radium, her cells were growing in George Gey’s lab. This all happened without the permission and the informing of Henrietta Lacks. The cells started growing in a unbelievable fast way, they doubled every 24 hours, Henrietta’s cells didn’t seem to stop growing. Henrietta’s cancer cell grew twenty times as fast as her normal healthy cells, which eventually also died a couple of days after they started growing. The first immortal human cells were grown, which was a big breakthrough in science. The HeLa cells were spread throughout the scientific world. They were used for major breakthroughs in science, for example the developing of the polio vaccine. The HeLa-cells caused a revolution in the scientific world, while Henrietta Lacks, who died Octob...

    Read More

  • Logic In The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

    651 Words  | 2 Pages

    People trust doctors to save lives. Everyday millions of Americans swallow pills prescribed by doctors to alleviate painful symptoms of conditions they may have. Others entrust their lives to doctors, with full trust that the doctors have the patient’s best interests in mind. In cases such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the Crownsville Hospital of the Negro Insane, and Joseph Mengele’s Research, doctors did not take care of the patients but instead focused on their self-interest. Rebecca Skloot, in her contemporary nonfiction novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, uses logos to reveal corruption in the medical field in order to protect individuals in the future.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Essay

    1523 Words  | 4 Pages

    Most people live in capitalist societies where money matters a lot. Essentially, ownership is also of significance since it decides to whom the money goes. In present days, human tissues matter in the scientific field. Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, shows how Henrietta Lacks’s cells have been used well, and at the same time, how they have been a hot potato in science because of the problem of the ownership. This engages readers to try to answer the question, “Should legal ownership have to be given to people?” For that answer, yes. People should be given the rights to ownership over their tissues for patients to decide if they are willing to donate their tissues or not. Reasons will be explained as follows.

    Read More

  • Book Review: The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks

    1084 Words  | 3 Pages

    Henrietta Lacks was born on August 18, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. She stayed with her grandfather who also took care of her other cousins, one in particular whose name is David (Day) Lacks. As Henrietta grew up, she lived with both her Grandpa Tommy and Day and worked on his farm. Considering how Henrietta and Day were together from their childhood, it was no surprise that they started having kids and soon enough got married. As the years continued, Henrietta noticed that she kept feeling like there was a lump in her womb/cervix and discovered that there was a lump in her cervix. Soon enough, Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Medical Center to get this check and learned that she had cervical cancer. But here is where the problem arises, Henrietta gave full consent for her cancer treatment at Hopkins, but she never gave consent for the extraction and use of her cells. During her first treatment TeLinde, the doctor treating Henrietta, removed 2 sample tissues: one from her tumor and one from healthy cervical tissue, and then proceeded to treat Henrietta, all the while no one knowing that Hopkins had obtained tissue samples from Henrietta without her consent. These samples were later handed to ...

    Read More

  • Lewis Thomas' The Lives of a Cell

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas consists of short, insightful essays that offer the reader a different perspective on the world and on ourselves.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Rhetorical Analysis

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    Henrietta’s cells were being inaugurated with space travel, infused into rat cells, and even being used to make infertile hens fertile again. However, these are only a few of the many accomplishments that Henrietta’s immortal cells made possible: “The National Cancer Institute was using various cells, including HeLa, to screen more than thirty thousand chemicals and plant extracts, which would yield several of today’s most widely used and effective chemotherapy drugs, including Vincristine and Taxol,”(pg.139). This example of logos from the text again shows just how important these Henrietta’s cells were to the future developments in

    Read More

  • The Green Peas Recessive And The Pea Plant Experiment

    1086 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lacks was an African-American tobacco farmer born in Virginia. Lacks was a young mom with five children early in her life and married her first cousin. In early 1951 Lacks went to Johns Hopkins Hospital for a “knot” she felt inside of her. When Lacks told her cousins about the knot they assumed she was pregnant. They had presumed correctly, but after giving birth to her fifth child Lacks started bleeding abnormally and in large amounts. Henrietta’s local doctor tested for syphilis, which came back negative, and referred her to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Johns Hopkins was the only hospital in the area that would treat black patients. Her doctor there examined a lump in her cervix and cut off a small piece, which he sent to the pathology lab. This lump later would be known as the tumor that killed her. Soon after, Henrietta was told she had a malignant epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix. Lacks was treated with radium tubes sewn in place, after several days they were removed and Lacks was discharged. She had instructions to return for her X-ray treatments. In the duration of her radiation treatment Henrietta had two parts of her cervix removed, the cancerous and healthy cells. This was done without Henrietta’s knowledge, but ended up being what made her famous in the medical field. The cells removed were given to Doctor George Otto Gey and would ultimately become the HeLA immortal cell line, commonly used in

    Read More

  • Case Study Henrietta Lacks

    955 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this case, the corporation/ doctors who used HeLa cells were the powerful and Henrietta and her family were powerless. John Hopkins was the hospital Henrietta was diagnosed at, The book mentions how this hospital was located in a poor black neighborhood where researchers had easy access to test subjects. These test subject were poor and uneducated and the researchers used these subjects to do research(). This shows how powerful remained in power by giving free treatment and in return using their body parts. The powerless had no power because of racial inequality, low education, and remained indebted to the hospital/doctors for the free treatment. After Henrietta's death, doctors were successful into getting an approval from Henrietta's husband(Day) to do a topsy on her body. Henrietta's husband says the doctors never mentioned anything about growing Henrietta's cells. They bribed him by saying the topsy would benefit his children in the future. Day gave consent to the doctors to do a topsy on her because it would benefit his children(164). Day also said, “ I’ve always known this much: they is the doctor, and you got to go by what they say. I don’t know as much as they do”( 164). This shows how the powerful remained in power by using their social status of being a high authority to bribe a poor black man about helping his children in the future. The children received no benefits

    Read More

  • Henrietta Lacks Analysis

    529 Words  | 2 Pages

    Not knowing all the information you need to fully access a situation, or not being able to see the good being done because it hasn’t happened yet can lead you to feel a certain way about a topic. I am trying to show you in these next few how different your opinion can be based on the knowledge you have. Henrietta Lacks had cells taken from her without her or her family's knowledge; little did they know the positive impact it would have. The public interpretation would be different if the book had been published in 1951 because of the lack there of information, biased judgment, and ethical reasoning.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Medical Ethics In The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

    1564 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, depicts the violation of medical ethics from the patient and researcher perspectives specifically when race, poverty, and lack of medical education are factors. The novel takes place in the southern United States in 1951. Henrietta Lacks is born in a poor rural town, Clover, but eventually moves to urban Turner Station. She was diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins hospital where cells was unknowingly taken from her and used for scientific research. Rebecca Skloot describes this when she writes, “But first—though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting sample or asked she wanted to be a donor—Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta's cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish” (33). The simple act of taking cells, which the physicians did not even think twice about, caused decades

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

    1039 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 lecture when he said that Henrietta Lacks was a black woman. In this book, Rebecca wants to tell the truth about the story of Henrietta Lacks during her medical process and the rights for Henrietta’s family after she died.

    Read More

  • The Immortal Life

    1669 Words  | 4 Pages

    I am, Henrietta Lacks, and this is my story. My personal war on cancer was lost. I have died in pain, tormented by the tumors covering my body like a web, at the John Hopkins Hospital. But my life didn’t end at that point. Unexpectedly, the cancer tissue, which was taken from me by Dr. Gey, continued on living. Even though I was dead, my cells were alive - full of miracles to unfold and misery to cause.

    Read More

More about Analysis of Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Open Document