Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

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Henrietta Lacks was an african american women born on August 1, 1920, “into a family of impoverished tobacco farmers in Roanoke, Virginia” (Spigner 1).On January 29, 1951 Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins. John Hopkins was the only hospital in the area that treated black patients at that time. Henrietta went in because she felt a "knot" in her womb.She had previously told her cousins about the "knot" and they presumed that she may have been pregnant. They were correct, henrietta was indeed pregnant and she gave birth to her daughter Deborah. But after giving birth to her daughter Deborah, Lacks had a severe hemorrhage. A hemorrhage is heavy bleeding from a tissue rupture. Her primary care doctor only tested her for syphilis, which came back …show more content…

In 1970 physicians realized that she had been misdiagnosed and actually had an adenocarcinoma. Adenocarcinoma is a type of cancer formed from glands in epithelial tissue. Lacks was treated with radium tube inserts in the hospital and was discharged a few days later with instructions to return for X-ray treatments as a follow-up. During her treatments, two samples were taken from Lacks cervix without her permission or knowledge one sample was of healthy tissue and the other was cancerous. These samples were given to George Otto Gey. George Otto Grey was a physician and cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins hospital, the same hospital that Henrietta was admitted to.. The cells from the cancerous sample eventually became known as the “ HeLa” immortal cell line ,this cell was a commonly used cell line in biomedical research On August 8, 1951 Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins for a routine radiation treatment session and asked to be admitted due to continued severe abdominal pain“ by september , Henrietta’s body was almost entirely taken over by tumors…. They’d grown on her diaphragm, her bladder and her lungs”(Skloot

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