The use of abstractions has become a common practice as a means to cope with the cruel realities with which humans are daily faced. It would be almost be too much to bear if every time a travesty occurred, we stopped to evaluate the weight that the people personally affected would feel by this happening to them. Oftentimes, the alternative, ignoring our empathetic responses by creating abstractions in our mind is much easier. Unfortunately, this is what happened to Henrietta Lacks. When researchers took cells from Henrietta’s cervix and created an immortal line of them entitled HeLa, the two became entirely separate entities. HeLa was a line of cells that was important to scientists, and Henrietta was no longer even a thought in their minds. …show more content…
Skloot prefaces the tale of the Lacks family by revealing the reason she wanted to write this book: she thought Henrietta had been seen as an abstraction for too long. As the book continues, Skloot explains Henrietta’s scientific contribution throughout the rest of the book, but periodically interrupts it to insert little anecdotes from the lives of Henrietta and her family, as if to continually remind us that she was a real person. By switching back and forth between the science and the background stories of the Lacks family, Skloot is anticipating that we will eventually move our focus back on the science and forget the person, even within the small period of time reading the book. So it is clear that in Skloot’s narrative, she finds it very important to represent the family’s side of the story in addition to the scientific achievements that have been made with HeLa. She wants her book to not only be scientifically informative but to tell the story of Henrietta's life like no one ever …show more content…
Nothing in the agreement suggests that she knew they would be taking samples from her body to do research. All Henrietta wanted was for them to make her feel better. With that in mind, we can assume that she would’ve signed whatever papers were necessary in order for them to do a procedure that she thought would save her life. Even if she did understand that they were going to take samples from her body to do research on, it is fair to say that she could not have given informed consent. There are a couple of reasons which would make Henrietta predisposed to not ask any questions of her doctors. She did not have very much education so it is possible that she had no way to comprehend what they were going to do to her. Secondly, she was a poor African American woman that was receiving free treatments. It is possible that she feared if she didn’t sign a document, Johns Hopkins would stop giving her the assistance she needed and she would die, leaving her family behind. So she did sign a document, but she likely did not give informed consent and Johns Hopkins did not inform her that they took her
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.
Lacks Town is a street about a mile long where a lot of Henrietta’s family lives. While in Lacks Town Skloot runs into Lacks’ first cousin, Hector “Cootie” Henry, and he invites her inside to talk about Henrietta. Henry says of Henrietta, “[…] even her memory pretty much dead now. Everything about Henrietta dead except them cells” (80). Henry goes on to talk about the way he remembers Lacks. He remembers her as a loving and caring person who has taken care of him in the past. Henry also is baffled by the existence of her cells existing for so long outside of her body. He says, “[…] they said if we could get all the pieces of her together, she’d weigh over eight hundred pounds now, and Henrietta was never a big girl. She just still growin” (81). He then speculates whether or not the situation with Lacks and HeLa cells has anything to do with voodoo or if it is all a result of her
In this paper, I will analyze Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, concentrating on Henrietta Lacks’ life, as well as ethical controversies and sociological impact surrounding the HeLa cells. First, I will discuss the author’s main arguments and the type of evidence used throughout the paper. Then, I will summarize the life of Henrietta Lacks focusing on her diagnosis and treatment up to her death. After, I will describe the ethical debates that the author presented and how they relate to Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells. Finally, I will examine the impact HeLa cells have had on the society, specifically regarding the medical community, as well as the effect HeLa cells had on Henrietta’s family.
...and the great scientific achievements that followed were very interesting to me and very well written by Rebecca Skloot. But what made it all so real for me, was the personal story of Henrietta and her family. The frustration of the family and the lack of information that was given by the scientists really made me angry. These people suffered from so much injustice, why did no one made a small effort to explain it to them all? Reading about the health problems The story of the Lackes really visualizes the problems in science before, and the need to resolve them. In the end, the most important lesson learnt is that human tissue used for research shouldn’t be used in such a materialistic way, but it should be handled with in a respectful and ethical way.
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.
Skloot mentions several cases where doctors hurt people with their actions. One of which occurs during one conversation between Henrietta and Sadie; “Hennie” shows Sadie her stomach which is “burnt… black as tar.” Henrietta says the cancer feels like the blackness “be spreadin all inside” of her (48). To build factual evidence of the corruption, Skloot directly quotes Sadie in order to ensure the event really took place. She uses logic to connect the factual side effects of cancer treatment to the imagery of tar. She effectively communicates the terrible job the doctors do to treat Henrietta. The blackness of Henrietta’s skin represents the blackness in the medical system. Skloot knows that people want to get better, and if the medical system continues to stay flawed no one ever will. Another case in which doctors treated patients inhumanly involves Henrietta’s eldest daughter. Skloot writes, “Elsie Lacks [died from] respiratory failure, epilepsy, [and] cerebral palsy” (270). All of these ailments occurred in a supposed hospital, meant for the mentally disabled. Skloot uses facts to help the reader logically follow the horror story of the Lacks family. She spells out exactly what doctors put Elsie through and helps to illuminate the terrible state of the medical world at that time. She uses fact as undisputed tributes of knowledge to back her claims, and to make them appear undeniable. Skloot emphasizes the terrible failure of the
Henrietta Lacks’ story is disturbingly similar to that of the Law and Order episode, Immortal. Particularly, they both share the same basic premise. In Rebecca Skloot’s account of Henrietta’s life, she explains. “. . . though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting samples or asked if she wanted to be a donor, [Dr. Lawrence Wharton, Jr.] picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of ...
The story about Henrietta Lacks is the evidence that the ethics of medical processes need to be improved. For a long time, many patients have been victims of malpractice. Sometimes, the doctors still can do anything without the agreement from patients. Any medical institution needs to hold the integrity on any consent form that is signed by a patient. To summarize, the story of Henrietta Lacks could be the way to improve the standardization and equality of medical institutions in the future.
Imagine having a part of your body taken from you without your permission, and then having those cells that are a part of your body grow and are being processed in labs around the world and then ultimately being used for the highest of research. That is what happens to Henrietta Lacks. In the book, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, we see Henrietta Lacks and her families story unravel, the numerous hardships that they faced, and the shocking revelation that their relative cells were being used for research without her consent and theirs.
In “Part 1: Life” of “The immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, she starts telling us the life of Henrietta, where she grew, that she married Day, and everything she went trough with her cancer. But, more than that, Skloot is trying to show us the ethical, social, and health issues black people had back in those days, and also she wants to let us know how lucky we are to live in this period where we have a lot of opportunities, racism is not a strong movement but still affects the society a little, and of course give thanks to the advances of the medical and science world most of it because of the HeLa cells.
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
From the persistent phone calls phone calls explaining her intentions to the accurate portrayal that the family so desperately wanted for Henrietta. Skloot dismantles the idea that Henrietta and her family were nothing but abstractions that did not have a place in the media or scientific community and builds on the fact that HeLa cells once belonged to a human being. That human being was a beautiful woman with “... walnut eyes, straight white teeth, and full lips… She kept her nails short so bread dough wouldn’t stick under them when she kneaded it, but she always painted them a deep red to match her toenails.”
In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many characters must adjust to the face of adversity to better their
A prime example of Skloot appealing to ethos in the novel is simply through her character. Skloot presents her vast knowledge in science in the novel countless of times. She displayed this by stating that she had worked on getting a bi...
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