Policemen, firefighters, and doctors are heroes for stopping crime and saving the day. But what if the dead could save the day? About 20,000 U.S. bodies are donated to science every year. In the past, many patients that perished in hospitals were used as research studies or surgical experiments without consent. Henrietta Lacks is a prime example of this unethical treatment. Even though she passed in the 1950s, her body made her a hero. In Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal LIfe of Henrietta Lacks, she keeps the reader compelled with Henrietta’s life story and discusses how her legacy helped advance medicine. However, Henrietta was given no credit and her family was left in the dark for decades about how Henrietta’s cells help medical research. …show more content…
With the donations of a person’s body, doctors and surgeons can help find cure to variety of diseases (The Advantages and Disadvantages of Body Donations). In the novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot discusses how Henrietta was used to create vaccines for diseases and to find cures for cancer. Doctors took samples of Henrietta's body to run tests (Skloot 90). Henrietta’s body was used to stop polio and started virology/vaccines (Skloot 93). Her cells also made is possible to diagnose genetic diseases and to discover chromosomes and cloning (Skloot 100). If Henrietta did not “donate” her body to science, then we would not be alive right now. This shows how the human body is important to medical advancements. Without a person to test it on, doctors and medical researchers would not know all the information they do …show more content…
Cliodhna Russell created a poll asking Would You Donate Your Body to Medical Science, with the choices yes, no, and I don’t know. The poll showed that only 50% of the people who voted, would donate his/her body to science, showing that there is skepticism in the thought of donating. One reason why people would not donate his or her body to science is that many doctors and surgeons use objectification. In Mary Roach's book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, she discusses how medical staff uses objectification to “help depersonalize the human form that students will be expected to sink knives into and eviscerate” (Roach 3). This coping method is to help deal with human corpses but it makes the once alive person into an object. As if he or she was never alive. Some people would be against donating his or her body because of doctors and surgeons objectifying them, making them not important at
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
I think patients should be given legal ownership over their tissues because it is their body and if they don’t want to share their tissues they shouldn’t have to. It is their choice nobody else’s. The story “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” it’s about the ethical conduct of research, specifically informed consent. The origins of the informed consent date back to the early twentieth century, even though many situations arose prior to the twentieth century indicating the need for informed consent
The novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is written by Rebecca Skloot. This novel provides a real story regarding research using human tissue without patient’s consent. It gives the background of Henrietta Lacks and the achievements HeLa cells established to point out how fallacious it is for doctors to take the cells without asking. Through the unique pattern and devices, Skloot expresses her sympathy for the right of consent of medical research. This novel illustrates Skloot’s footsteps
Non-fiction Essay Writing Prompt 1: Purpose 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
In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, there is a conflict inside the story about how the title character’s cells should be handled. Outside of the story is the conflict over who the person is that goes through the hero’s journey, is it Skloot or Deborah Lacks? Skloot was a student who became curious about Henrietta Lacks, a woman who had her cells taken away from her without her acknowledgment, and Skloot searches for answers with the help of Henrietta's daughter
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
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: A Doctoring Lens Rebecca Skloot begins The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with a quote from Elie Wiesel: Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, With its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, And with some measure of triumph. This quote centers Henrietta Lacks’ story around the same questions that have driven the Doctoring course: What does it mean to care for others? And how do we ensure that we care for our patients
The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks is a book about the women behind the scientific revolution of using actual cancer cells to perform cancer research. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who was barely educated and worked as a tobacco farmer. At the age of thirty she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. In Lacks’ time being uneducated, African American, and a woman was not a great mix. They were often undermined and taken advantage of. When Lacks started to become very ill she went to
to enroll subjects in research when they are not capable of giving free and fully informed consent?. In this essay I will be talking about what informed consent is, and why it is so important in medical research. I will explain the rights it provides to the patients, and why it has been required in health society.
Henrietta Lacks Essay The topic of “informed consent” and the story about Henrietta Lacks is still talked about today in society. Because of Henrietta's lacks issues with John Hopkins Hospital, it has since brought questions to tissue and cell rights. Henrietta Lacks had cervical cancer and doctors at John Hopkins took her cells without her knowledge and discovered that her cells were immortal. A million dollar industry was produced around her cells and she was left struggling to pay bills, penniless
papers required me to use the books Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot as guides. I enjoyed reading Dunn’s novel over Skloot’s novel, but I experienced more difficulty when writing one of the papers based on Dunn’s novel. All struggles aside, I improved my writing and learned how to write different essay types with the help of both books. Our first paper, based on the Lacks text, was an easy and fun paper to write. I’ve always wanted to show off
walked in just hoping the teacher was an easy grader and it would be quick. You surprised me. As I started reading Thank You for Arguing I was still uneasy. As time went on Tyfa became relevant to life. I learned a new skill every day which I tried to use on my other professors. Using it in really life or discussing in class became helpful. So I would advise continuing Tyfa,in class discussion and more “games” like the Ugli orange. The class always seemed to enjoy debates, I... ... middle of paper
improvement. This essay will examine how important it is to discover new ways of thinking about prior knowledge than it is to discover new facts. I believe that using prior knowledge to push discovery is much more important than trying to discovers new data or facts. Medicine is one area that constantly looks to use prior knowledge to discover new things. Take the HeLa cells for instance. The initial discover of these cells occurred in 1951. These cells came from a black woman named Henrietta Lacks. She was