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In the non-fiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot sets out to find out the story behind Henrietta Lacks, the woman who was the original source of the famed HeLa cell line. The HeLa cell line is famous for being considered “immortal” as the cells divide without stopping or dying. They have helped scientific research in various areas, although their infinite growth has caused problems in labs as it can outcompete other cell lines, and take up too much room. While these cells have been extensively studied for many years, much less is known about Henrietta herself.
After learning about the HeLa cells in biology class when she was younger, Skloot was curious to learn more about their original source. Dismayed by how little information there was on Henrietta, she decided to set out to tell this woman’s story. Her journey to write Henrietta Lacks story took her from Baltimore to Clover, VA, the town where Henrietta originally grew up in her grandfather’s cabin, which were former slave quarters. Along the way, Skloot seeks out as many living relatives of Henrietta as she can, having to put everything she has into convincing them to talk to her about their relatives past. The Lacks family carries a lot of distrust from having been burned by previous reporters, and not receiving any benefit from the cells Henrietta contributed to science.
The book alternates between excerpts of Henrietta’s life, and moments during Skloots information search. Henrietta spent her 31-year life span as a tobacco farmer, caring for her children and husband since a young age. She is described as a beautiful woman, full of life, which is why her battle with cervical cancer contrasts so harshly in the book. In 1951 she came dow...
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...was made for monetary compensation. That is where the ethical issue lies. An individual must agree to have their tissues used, and researchers must be faithful in following these agreements.
Overall, Rebecca Skloot does a fantastic job in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in telling an interesting story, while also bringing to light the major ethical issues in medical research. She uses her more current day sections to describe her search for information on Henrietta and how the HeLa cells have affected her family. At the same time, she eloquently tells Henrietta’s story and illustrates how the ethical standards of medical research were not upheld. These ethical issues must be addressed in order for medical research to continue without being detrimental to society.
Works Cited
Skloot, R. (2010). The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers.
ILofHL Pages 56-86 Summary The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is the result of years of research done by Skloot on an African American woman with cervical cancer named Henrietta Lacks. Cells from Lacks’ tumor are taken and experimented on without her knowledge. These cells, known as HeLa cells, are the first immortal human cells ever grown. The topic of HeLa cells is at the center of abundantly controversial debates.
In order to fully understand the significance of the life of Henrietta Lacks, one must first understand the nature of the historical moment in which she lived, and died. Henrietta Lacks was a poor, African American woman born in 1920; Henrietta lived in Clover, Virginia, on a tobacco farm maintained by many generations of relatives. This historical moment can best be understood when evaluated using a structural analysis; a structural analysis is an examination of multiple components which form an organization; structural analyses often focus on the goals and purpose of the organization in question. Henrietta and her family were greatly affected by structural violence, a type of systematic violence exerted via legislation and discrimination. Often following systematic violence is a separate type of violence, known as symbolic violence; this occurs when structural violence is viewed as normal based on media representation or popular
Rebecca Skloot has done a marvelous job telling the story of Henrietta Lacks; the woman who changed science!
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.
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
“Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art,” said Josef Mengele, comparing science to an art. He was less of an artist and more of a curious, debatably crazy, doctor. He was a scientist in Nazi Germany. In general, there was a history of injustice in the world targeting a certain race. When Mengele was around, there were very few medical regulations, so no consent had to be given for doctors to take patients’ cells and other tests done on the patients’ bodies without their consent. This was the same time that Henrietta Lacks lived. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who went to the doctor because she had cervical cancer. Her cells were taken and are still alive in culture today (Skloot 41). Hence, her cells were nicknamed Immortal (Skloot 41). Although many, at the time, saw no issue with using a patient without consent issue with what?, on numerous occasions since then courts have determined that having consent is necessary for taking any cells. The story of Henrietta lacks is has similarities to an episode of Law and Order titled Immortal, which is an ethical conundrum. Despite this, the shows are not exactly the same and show differences between them. Both of these stories, one supposedly fictional, can also be compared to the injustices performed by Josef Mengele in Nazi Germany.
These two group cannot work together because of conflicting distribution of power. These groups can also be called the “bourgeoisie” known as the powerful or the “proletariat” which is the powerless. In this theory both groups are constantly at conflict because one group wants to maintain power while the other group is powerless. In the case of Henrietta the groups that are in power are the companies who are mass producing her cells and the doctors who obtained the cells. And the group who is powerless is Henrietta and her family. This unequal distribution of people comes from henrietta's social status, lack of power, and low wealth. Rebecca Skloot (2011) states in her book that Henrietta's family still lived in poverty even after discovering the multibillion dollar cell production. () And according to Gloria Blackwell from the AAWU, she states that Henrietta's name was not released until the 1970s and even then her family didn’t know that the HeLa cells were still being produced. This conduct continued for 25 years after her death. () According to Rebecca Skloot, in her book she states that Henrietta's husband, Day, consented to the autopsy of her body because he was promised that this will helps his kids one day. However, even after agreeing to the autopsy his kids still lived in poverty and was not ever
HeLa cells were one of the greatest medical inventions that came about for the scientific field and yet the woman behind this medical feat is not fully remembered and honored. Her cells and tissue were taken away from her without consent and more than that, she was exploited for being black and not questioning what the doctor was doing. Her family suffered through countless years of agonizing pain in which they were misinformed about where and what her cells were being used for. Yes, HeLa cells changed the way we view medicine today, but only at the cost of creating one of the greatest controversies of owning ones body.
The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a story of science, religion and the life of the Henrietta Lacks herself. It has won many awards and was on the New York Best Seller list for over three years. To summarize it briefly, the book is based on the cells of Henrietta Lacks who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Sometime before she died, some of her tissue was sampled and used for research without her permission. They used the cells form her body to experiment on which led to many breakthrough discoveries in the scientific world. The cells were later named HeLa cells. No one in her family knew about this until years after her death, so they felt like she was just being used as an experiment from which they got nothing. When looking at the book as a whole, it is easy to see why so many people hold it in such high regards; however it appealed to me in a different way.
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
It was her cells that became what is known as HELA cells or immortal cells. Her story is interesting to me because of her impact on the science community. Her cells allowed scientist to perform
In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, the author highlights the scientific advances of HeLa cells, as well as the personal setbacks of Henrietta Lacks’ family. HeLa is a commonly used cell line in laboratories worldwide and is so often referred to as “the cell line that changed modern science”. This line of immortal cells has helped advance science in ways beyond compare. HeLa has allowed cell testing, cell cloning, and the discovery of various vaccines, including the HPV vaccine. While HeLa has done wonders in the medical field, it has caused unrepairable damage among the Lacks family.
In the novel The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, the author tells the miraculous story of one woman’s amazing contribution to science. Henrietta Lacks unknowingly provides scientists with a biopsy capable of reproducing cells at a tremendusly fast pace. The story of Henrietta Lacks demonstrates how an individual’s rights can be effortlessly breached when it involves medical science and research. Although her cells have contributed to science in many miraculous ways, there is little known about the woman whose body they derived from. Skloot is a very gifted author whose essential writing technique divides the story into three parts so that she, Henrietta
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
..., the name of Henrietta Lacks needs to be introduced to the world since she is the woman who generated HeLa cells, because the name of the person who generated HeLa cells is still unknown. By doing this, her family will be honored and respected by others.