In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot focuses on two stories: the development of the HeLa cells and the lives of Henrietta’s family members. While in the scientific world of HeLa cells, the power is held by the doctors, such as George Gey and other doctors because of their superior intelligence to exploit the Lacks’. With that said, the Lacks family deny themselves power by remaining uneducated in the ever changing society we live in. People acquire intelligence to empower themselves, which explains how the uneducated Lacks family lose their privileges to more intelligent people. It is also apparent that Henrietta’s children were manipulated by people more powerful than them and it played a major role into who …show more content…
The doctors didn't only take advantage of the Lacks family, they took advantage of whomever was intelligent enough to know that they were being fooled. Skloot wrote about a man named John Moore and how he was also being taken advantage of by the University of California to produce the Mo cell line. The Doctor found out that the man's tissue was very useful and he could make a large profit off of it. With that, the doctor kept asking the man to return for checkups after he was healthy so that he could harvest more tissue. The man eventually wised up and sued the doctor and the case went up to the Supreme Court and the court decided to rule on the side of the man. This was a ground-breaking case because people now had the ability to patent our cells for profit. This led to scientists and doctors being truthful with their patients about all aspects of surgeries whether they are large or small. When Henrietta's tissue from her cervix was taken the case was far from taking place, so she had no ownership of the cells once they were removed from her body. Had Henrietta had the ability to patent her cells before her death her family would be in a completely different position financially than they are …show more content…
On that note, education is not purely for the monetary gain, but also to empower those who actively pursue it. It is evident throughout the book that the African American people are less informed than the average individual. It is apparent mostly from their living situation and morale overall. The Lacks town is completely rundown and the people living there have no way to rebuild because they do not make enough money from their jobs. Also, the people accept how they live and how much they know and are fine with being on the lower end of the totem pole. It is evident that they can be taken advantage of, even by people that aren't that much more intelligent than them; such as Sir Lord Keenan Kester Cofield. Although Cofield was a smooth talker, more educated people had no problem seeing through his facade even though the Lacks could not. After Cofield, the Lacks' became afraid to talk to anyone about their mother or her cells because they were afraid of being taken advantage of again. That is an example of how people who are less educated fear those who are because they believe that they will be taken advantage of, which causes problems with those people pursuing further
In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot mainly focuses on three areas, the life of Henrietta Lacks and her family, ethics in the medical and research fields, and scientific advances due to HeLa cells. Skloot integrates examples of ethical controversies regarding the HeLa cells and related topics, and sociological benefits
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.
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...
Imagine that you were Douglas Mawson, along with two other explorers exploring unknown Antarctica, when everything goes wrong. Douglas Mawson suffered more adversity than Henrietta Lacks and Phineas Gage. Henrietta Lacks is about a woman who died from cervical cancer and her cells were extracted; later to find that her cells were immortal. Phineas Gage was a normal man when an extraordinary thing happened—he had a iron rod go through his skull. Phineas gage didn’t go through as much hardship, but he did go through more than Lacks. Half way through Mawson’s journey, both of his partners died, and it was just him, all alone in Antarctica. So, as anyone could see, Mawson experiences the most adversity among the three figures for many reasons.
Although she was taken from the world too soon, Henrietta Lacks was a warm hearted woman, and though unbeknownst to her, she would pave the way for the medical field and greatly expand our understanding of one of the nation’s greatest killers; cancer. In 1951 people did not talk about cancer lightly; cancer was a very touchy subject, especially for those who knew they couldn’t receive treatment once they had been diagnosed. When Lacks went to the hospital because of a “knot on her womb” she never thought that it would grow into a full fledge tumor that would end up taking her life. Henrietta lived a simple yet happy life which consisted of working on the farm, loving her husband, and raising children, and she was not going to ruin the lifestyle she knew so well by telling her family that she had cancer; it was just unheard of.
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.
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 ...
In the novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author, Rebecca Skloot, tries to convince the audience that her argument regarding, Henrietta and her cells is worth thinking about. Skloot argues that the woman whose body contained these life-changing cells deserved to be recognized. While trying to prove her side of the argument, Skloot uses logos within the novel to emphasize to the audience just how important her cells are, by providing the science behind the cells and their accomplishments.
...through society and enacting that awareness as a vehicle for change we are left to repeat these same injustices. Henrietta's cells gave society the ability to cure diseases, fight cancer, vaccinate children, and by leaps and bounds further our knowledge of biology at large. At what price does this progress come and who reaps these benefits? Henrietta's children do not have access to the advancements their mother's body is responsible for and nor do countless other individuals on this planet. Where is the line drawn? The extraction of HeLa cells without consent from Henrietta did not mark the exploitative end or the cells would have remained a communal property within the science community. The story of Henrietta and her cells is one small act of a greater play that showcases the exploitative nature of capitalism and the forlorn society it perpetuates indefinitely.
The novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by author Rebecca Skloot is about a black woman whose cells were used by doctors to study medicine without her knowledge or her permission. Rebecca Skloot first heard of Henrietta Lacks when she was 16-years-old in her college biology class. Her professor, Donald Defler, mentioned Henrietta briefly during his lesson about cells. Defler talked about how Henrietta’s cells helped scientists learn all they know about cell and cell culture today, and allowed them to develop disease-fighting drugs to combat herpes, leukemias, influenza, hemophilia and Parkinson’s disease. Although Defler did acknowledge the fact that it was Henrietta’s cells who helped change the future of medicine, all Defler added was that she was a black woman. Skloot was unsatisfied with this information and she wanted to know more about Henrietta Lacks, such as “Where was she from?... Did she know how important her cells were? Did she have any children?” (Skloot 4). The problem was, though, that no one cared to find out anything about the person whose cells were famous all over the world. Most people, in fact, did not even realize that her name was Henrietta Lacks, and not Helen Lane. All people knew about this woman was that her cancerous cells were referred to as HeLa cells. Thus, Skloot’s purpose was to inform people around the world about the life of the woman whose
“Like most young Lackses, Day didn't finish school: he stopped in the fourth grade because the family needed him to work the fields. But Henrietta stayed until the sixth grade. During the school year, after taking care of the garden and livestock every morning, she'd walk two miles—past the white school where children threw rocks and taunted her—to the colored school, a three-room wooden farmhouse hidden under tall shade trees…]
I enjoy reading and generally prefer dystopian fiction, but I have read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks which really got me thinking about the advances in science. I have also read some classics like Romeo and Juliet, Animal Farm, The Secret Garden and, most recently, To Kill A Mockingbird.
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
The lacks challenge everything I thought I knew about faith, science, journalism, and race. Throughout the “Immortal life of Henrietta lacks “by Rebecca Skloot racism is developed throughout the chapter when Henrietta cells are taken away from her without her consent when she goes to the doctor's office at John Hopkins hospital. Racism plays a big role in today's society because people are bullied and judge because they may have one more kind of skin tone. When Henrietta first was diagnosed with cancer, she had no choice but to attend a hospital that only for blacks because it was a time where segregation still had an impact on black lives. Racial discrimination occurs all around the world many are treated differently due to the color of their skin because it teaches people to make a judgment about others based on the way they perceive someone.
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.