The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Essay

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Cell biology has made a huge upsurge to the advancement and face of public health. In the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, cell biologists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland have researched Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells to find a new life changing discovery: that her cells, other known as HeLa cells, would be everlasting and would replenish themselves and change the picture of medicine. Rebecca Skloot begins the compelling story of this scientific advancement of saving humanity from illness by analyzing the life of Henrietta. Throughout part one, life, Skloot reviews just how these cells were founded, how Henrietta’s life began and how Henrietta’s story continues to be told and researched today. The purpose of this novel is to examine the significant tools of medicine that developed from one human being. The novel expresses life in the past involving the issue of slavery, racism, gaps in communication, poverty and suffering. It also explores the issue of ethics, particularly the topic of informed consent, within medical research and public health. Unfortunately very few people knew who Henrietta Lacks was, yet HeLa cells were omnipresent in the medical …show more content…

Although we’ve made substantial progress in attempts to eliminate discrimination, poverty today still exists. Huge advancements have been made for medical professionals to pay close attention to patients’ rights. Health inequality is still believed to be existent today through disparities in race, gender, income, education and geography. Those who are poor or live below the poverty line receive substandard care: less likely to get the same care as someone with health insurance and access to medical professionals and clinics is limited. For Henrietta the care she received was subpar as she had little say in what was done as well as the division between whites and

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    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...

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  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

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    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...

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  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

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    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.

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  • Ethos in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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    The credibility and trustworthiness of a person can be achieved through their achievements and titles. Writers have the ability of achieving this by appealing to the rhetorical strategy ethos. Rebecca Skloot’s inclusion of her knowledge in science to provide her credibility and numerous information of all her characters in the novel helps develop the rhetorical strategy of ethos. Skoot’s implementation of appealing to ethos aids in emphasizing on the credibility of both herself and all the other characters in the novel. She demonstrates this rhetorical strategy by indicating titles and achievements her characters in the novel. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot develops the rhetorical strategy of ethos through the use of her characters in the novel consisting of Skloot herself, George Gey, and the virologist Chester Southam.

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    “HeLa cells were one of the most important things that happened to medicine in the last hundred years.” This quote portrays the overall importance of HeLa cells to the science community, and reveals just how significant the exploitation of Henrietta was. Henrietta Lacks was a middle-aged, African American woman who developed cervical cancer like many others in the 1950’s. However, cell samples were taken from here without consent, and these cells were unlike any cell ever seen before. Tragically, Henrietta died shortly after and her family knew nothing of these cells that were found to be “immortal,” until one day, when their lives would never be the same. Tying into this unethical situation, Rebecca Skloot illustrates in the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks the importance of bioethics and morality for the protection and privacy of an individual. Rebecca really drives home this theme through the chronological development

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    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

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  • Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

    180 Words  | 1 Pages

    Did you ever wonder what are when HELA cells came to exist ?In the book the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, The author answers all your questestion that you could ever have about HELA cells. In this book be theme would be injustice because the doctors took the cells form her Henrietta without her knowing because she was poor and didn’t have the money. HELA cells first came to be when Henrietta Lacks was telling a couple of her friends that she felt like she had a knot in her stomach. Five months later she had a child, but the pain in her stomach still continued, so she finally went to doctor Jones to look inside her to see if there was anything wrong. When the doctor was done with his inspection he told her that she

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  • 'A Rhetorical Analysis Of Henrietta Lacks'

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    “Henrietta Lacks” by an unknown author appeared in International Herald Tribune in August of 2013. This magazine has published articles written for the general public on various news topics and issues; for the most part this article was pretty well-written. For example, the author’s purposes was to inform and persuade; he was successful on both parts. For instance, the author tries to inform by making the comment “ubiquitous in labs around the world and have been used in more than 74,000 research studies on almost every disease” (“Henrietta Lacks” 6). The author tries to persuade by making the comment “was not being done for their benefit but for the benefit of science” (“Henrietta Lacks” 6). However, there was some parts of this article that

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    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    While reading this book, I was surprised how easily the doctors took Henrietta's cells without her permission and used them for the things they did. Also, I was surprised with the amount of time it took for Henrietta’s family to find out about the HeLa cells.

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  • Summary: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

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    What do you do when something gets stolen from you? You call the police, right? What about when you are in 1951, where segregation is still occurring, and where black people are being tested on without their knowledge, and getting their body stolen from them, and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. Rebecca Skloot the author of, “ The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks” writes about the life of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman, who lives on a tobacco farm in Baltimore, Maryland. She was 30 years old the first time she went to John Hopkins to check about her lump, in January of 1951. The doctors had taken tissue from her cervix, without her knowledge, imagine if the doctors would have never of have done that? Would the Polio vaccine of ever have been created? Not only Polio, but the HeLa cells also helped breakthroughs of Leukemia, and influenza, and Parkinson’s disease. If the doctors would of have never taken the cells of Henrietta Lacks, we would of have never had those breakthroughs or those vaccines. Taking those cells of Henrietta were morally wrong, but in the end

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    Laying on a chilling silver surgery table, completely vulnerable. Not knowing that the surgeon, whom you trusted, is now taking important parts of your body to research on. You wake up to never know that because of your existence you've changed the face of science history forever. In a book written by Rebecca Skloot “The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks,” Skloot writes about the life of a African American woman and her cells that change the history of health and science, and this woman's name is Henrietta Lacks. Although Lacks was such an important impact in science history, Lacks and her family were never informed. Henrietta Lacks died in October 4, 1951, of cervical cancer and never knew about the amazing breakthrough that her body made in

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    Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks told the story of the injustice done a a young African American woman, and her family. Henrietta’s cancerous cells were taken from her without her consent, and turned out to be immortal. They were sold all over the world for billions of dollars, while her family, struggling to put food on the table, did not receive a penny of it. Rebecca Skloot uncovers the hidden story of the HeLa cells, and provides a novel not only highly informational, but also with insight to the workings of science. This book outlines the process of scientific inquiry, reveals the contrary forces of altruism and profit that influenced HeLa, and the risks and benefits of profit guiding research as well as the obstacles faced when conducting research for purely altruistic reasons.

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  • Essay On Henrietta Lacks

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    How would you feel if a part of you was used for medical research without your consent? If the research led to saving many lives, would that make it alright? This situation happened to Henrietta Lacks over 50 years ago, yet she died without even knowing. The story is about powerful, cancerous cells known as “HeLa” cells that forever changed science and the health field. At least that is all everyone used to care about. No one knew the identity of the person behind the cells, or that her family was living in poverty knowing nothing of what happened. Henrietta Lacks was an African American women with a husband and five children and she was living with cervical cancer. She went to John Hopkins hospital, one of few who would treat “colored” patients, where

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

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    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

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  • 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.

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