The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a wholesome story about hope, science, and coming together as a family in a new, strange environment. The story consists of the author: Rebecca Skloot, endeavoring on a lifechanging journey which spans states, as well as time periods. The main struggle of the story is John Hopkin’s use of Henrietta’s Lacks’ cells without her knowledge. After Henrietta’s death, the scientific community receives these cells, and begins to make groundbreaking advances in the fields of medicine, cancer research, and virology. The main conflict in the story is what the family should receive in terms of compensation for Henrietta’s cells. The plot continues to thicken when Henrietta’s daughter: Deborah, begins to discover more about her mother’s past, as well as her mother’s cells effects on most, if not all of humanity. Possibly the most controversial topics in the entire story, is the unauthorized use of Henrietta’s cells for research purposes. Throughout the story, people related to Henrietta attempt to make a profit of some kind off their relative’s immortal cell line. In my opinion, this course of action is no …show more content…
While I still side with the scientific community, I believe that Deborah’s claims are not entirely false, since she should be able to learn more about Henrietta, which she succeeds in doing in part three of the book. Another reason I enjoyed reading this, is the effect this had on the entire Hela situation. By writing a book, Rebecca Skloot not only informs the family about Henrietta, she informed the world about a subject most writers would not attempt to write about. All in all, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks serves as a testament to Henrietta’s life, and instead of glorifying her being, wisely chooses to tell the truth, which in all honesty, what a strong and just woman like Henrietta would have
All I can say is amazing information of your glorious and late Henrietta Lacks. This incedible women bettered our society in ways no common human could understand at the time because of how complex this matter was and still very much indeed is. I know there is much contraversy with the matter of how scientists achived immortal cells from your late relative, and I do strongly agree with the fact that it was wrong for these researches to take advantage of this incredible women, but I know it is not for me to say nonethless it must be said that even though it was wrong to take Lacks’ cells when she was dying sometimes one must suffer to bring joy to the entire world.
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.
...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.
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 the nearest hospital that would accept black patients. There the doctor, George Gey, misdiagnosed her illness and took a tissue sample without her consent. After suffering through her illness and trying to keep up with her five children Henrietta died
To have something stolen from you is devastating and can change your life. But what if what was taken from you will save billions of human lives? In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, we see a woman named Henrietta had a biopsy of a cancerous tumor, and the cells from the tumor were able to live and grow outside of her body; and even better, the cells go on to find the cure for diseases such as polio. The catch is this: she signed a document giving her hospital permission to perform any medical procedure they find necessary to help her treatment, but she never gave specific permission for the cells in that biopsy to be tested and cultured. Now the big debate is over whether or not it was legal for her doctors
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.
Most people live in 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 be given to people?” For that answer, yes. People should be given the rights to ownership over their tissues for patients to decide if they are willing to donate their tissues or not. Reasons will be explained as follows.
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.
How would you feel if you were able to save millions of lives and not be credited for it in the slightest. Furious, irritated, sad or even apoplectic, this is what happened to to family of the late Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman whose cancer cells were the source of the HeLa cell line, one of the most important cell lines in medical research ever discovered. With the major impact that Henrietta Lacks had on the medical community, her and her family received absolutely nothing in compensation. Henrietta Lacks's cells were the first to be observed that could be divided multiple times without dying, which is why they became known as "immortal." which is what gives the book about her the title the book has. When discussing Henrietta Lacks, there are multiple topics but the main topics are about tissue rights, compensation and the medical ethics.
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.
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
What is privacy? Well, it’s the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people. In terms of information, it is the right to have some control over how one’s own personal information is collected and used. This is a right that has been inherently protected by the U.S Constitution, agreed upon by the Supreme Court, and yet, issues around this very topic arise every day. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author Rebecca Skloot, addresses this issue in her story of the women behind the infamous HeLa cells. Her story shows that although privacy is a right that is inherently protected by the law, situations of injustice can still occur. Examples of this in the book include when Henrietta’s cells were given to Dr. Gey without any consent from Day, the situation in which Mr. Golde’s spleen was sold without his permission, as well as when the Lacks family were recontacted and mislead about the reasons they were tested years after Henrietta’s death.
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
In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many characters must adjust to the face of adversity to better their