Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

738 Words2 Pages

Truly great literature appeals to emotions in order to be most effective. If the novel does not resound with the reader’s heart and soul, they will have no incentive to care or relate to the story. Thus, love and empathy for a character’s personality makes them infinitely more real. During the 1900s, ethically controversial studies were being carried out in the name of scientific progress. Rebecca Skloot investigates the thought process of the researchers and patients involved in these studies and brings a sense of humanity to their actions. In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, Rebecca Skloot compels a sense of compassion far more effectively through pathos than she does through either ethos or logos. The author manages to bring Henrietta Lack’s personality to life through her motivations and goals, whereas Skloot’s credibility in the subject is weaker and the facts presented are not …show more content…

Skloot first heard about Henrietta almost thirty years ago, as she explains that she “was sixteen and sitting in a community college biology class” (8). Although Henrietta’s immediate relatives were hesitant to speak with outsiders, Skloot was very stubborn to let the world know the Lacks family’s story. Not every author would wait years for an interview, yet the content and research in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” was carefully constructed over nearly a decade. While Skloot’s research is very thorough, however, the accuracy of her sources can sometimes be questionable. A primary source of information that is used throughout the book comes from an old man named Cootie. He is quoted as he mutters “‘I know I got some information on Henrietta in here somewhere,’ … from under the mattress” (Skloot 62). However, referencing Cootie only leaves a minor blemish on Skloot’s otherwise detailed research and does not heavily detract from the content of the

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  • Summary: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

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    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.

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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

    1391 Words  | 3 Pages

    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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  • Logic In The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

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    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

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  • Authenticity in Nonfiction: The Henrietta Lacks Story

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    In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot tells the true story of the woman who the famous HeLa cells originated from, and her children's lives thereafter. Skloot begins the book with a section called "A Few Words About This Book", in which a particular quote mentioned captured my attention. When Skloot began writing Henrietta's story, one of Henrietta's relatives told Skloot, "If you pretty up how people spoke and change the things they said, that's dishonest. It’s taking away their lives, their experiences, and their selves" (Skloot). After reading that quote, an array of questions entered my mind, the most important being, "Do all nonfiction authors take that idea into consideration?" Nonfiction is a very delicate and

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  • Book Review: The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks

    1084 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

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

    619 Words  | 2 Pages

    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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  • Deductive Reasoning In Rebecca Skloot's Argument

    816 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rebecca Skloot uses inductive and deductive reasoning in her argument. Skloot includes a casual argument that Henrietta’s family used when they described Henrietta’s funeral. For example, Skloot states, “As Cliff and Fred lowered Henrietta’s coffin into her grave and began covering her with handfuls of dirt, the sky turned black as strap molasses. The rain fell thick and fast. Then came long rumbling thunder…” and Henrietta’s cousin Peter stated, “We shoulda knew she was trying to tell us something with that storm” (92). Skloot includes this casual argument because it illustrates how Henrietta’s family believed the storm that occurred on the day she was buried was caused by Henrietta. Skloot also uses deductive reasoning, which goes from general

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  • The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Rhetorical Analysis

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    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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    In the pages of “A Conspiracy of Cells” that were available to us, there were several differences in both writing style and content, compared to Skloot’s, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” One of the biggest differences is in Michael Gold’s, “A Conspiracy of Cells,” he focuses more on the Hela cells and the research, while in Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” Skloot focuses more on the Lacks family.

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  • Critical Analysis of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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    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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