In 1951, one woman’s misfortune became the ultimate breakthrough and lead to a huge discovery in science. Henrietta Lacks was a lower class African-American woman living in Baltimore, Maryland at the time. She had been suffering from a “knot in her womb” that caused her to experience grave pain. In the 1950’s, a time when hospitals turned away lower class African American patients away, they had access to receive free treatment from the public ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Although doctors there agreed to examine these patients, it is questionable how thorough and genuine they were throughout the examination. In 1950, Henrietta gave birth to her youngest daughter Deborah, and by January of 1951 she had a full-blown cancerous tumor in her cervix that no doctor previously noticed.
Many of the doctors at Hopkins had the same ideology; if patients were treated for free in the public ward, then it was fair to use them for research as a form of payment. Unbeknownst to Henrietta, her doctor took a sample of her cancerous cervical cells and passed then onto a Dr. George Gey without hesitation. Dr. Gey had attempted to grow human cells outside of the body for years. It was not until he came across Henrietta’s miraculous cells that he found success. The famously named HeLa cells grew like wild fire in culture and Dr. Gey was able to distribute them globally.
Rebecca Skloot, a science journalist and the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, found interest in the HeLa cell story from a young age. She was determined to find out able the woman behind the cells. Skloot wanted to know who HeLa was and about her story. Skloot writes the novel in an intriguing way, bouncing back and forth between Henrietta’s family’s experiences comi...
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...ired, but they do, without a doubt, have the right to consent any further research on their cells and DNA. It is immoral for doctors to con their patients into providing blood work when they turn it around and form a commercialized product out of it. The idea that once tissues are removed from your body they become waste anyone can have access to is a controversial concept. What a doctor chooses to do with that tissue, however, can violate patient trust and lack informed consent from the patient. When these two factors are broken, the patient is dishonored and the doctor is at fault. When it comes to the Lacks family, doctors not only mistreated Henrietta in the 1950’s, but also they continued to abuse their medical powers on her surviving family members. As a result, the HeLa cells left behind a family who mistrusted doctors and the practice of medicine altogether.
In February 2010, author and journalist Rebecca Skloot published a book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," which included the stories surrounding the HeLa cell line as well as research into Henrietta Lacks' life. In 1951 a poor young black women, Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer and at the time was treated in the “colored ward” or segregated division of Johns Hopkins Hospital. The procedure required samples of her cervix to be removed. Henrietta Lacks, the person who was the source of these cells was unaware of their removal. Her family was never informed about what had been accomplished with the use of her cells. The Lacks family has not received anything from the cell line to this day, although their mother’s cells have been bought and sold by many. This bestseller tells the stories of HeLa and traces the history of the cell while highlighting the ethical and legal issues of the research.
....S. Public Health Service advanced medical technology, it came at a high cost. A high cost that resulted in many African-Americans dead and a breach of trust for medical professionals. In the notable experiments of Henrietta Lacks, The Tuskegee Syphilis Men, and The Pellagra Incident, medical professions in no way protected the lives of these individuals. In fact, they used the medical advances discovered as a result of the human experimentations as a shield to mask the unethical decisions. Medical professionals targeted the African-American population and used their ignorance as a means to advance medical technologies. This in no way upholds the ethics that medical professionals should display. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks vividly exhibits the how the United States Public Health Service used, abused, and ultimately destroyed the African-American community.
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...
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.
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 first as people, rather than as a disease? In many ways, Henrietta Lacks’ story is a textbook case in how not to be a good physician.
Henrietta Lacks was born on August 18, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. She stayed with her grandfather who also took care of her other cousins, one in particular whose name is David (Day) Lacks. As Henrietta grew up, she lived with both her Grandpa Tommy and Day and worked on his farm. Considering how Henrietta and Day were together from their childhood, it was no surprise that they started having kids and soon enough got married. As the years continued, Henrietta noticed that she kept feeling like there was a lump in her womb/cervix and discovered that there was a lump in her cervix. Soon enough, Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Medical Center to get this check and learned that she had cervical cancer. But here is where the problem arises, Henrietta gave full consent for her cancer treatment at Hopkins, but she never gave consent for the extraction and use of her cells. During her first treatment TeLinde, the doctor treating Henrietta, removed 2 sample tissues: one from her tumor and one from healthy cervical tissue, and then proceeded to treat Henrietta, all the while no one knowing that Hopkins had obtained tissue samples from Henrietta without her consent. These samples were later handed to ...
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
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 about cell and cell culture today, and allowed them to develop disease-fighting drugs to combat herpes, leukemias, influenza, hemophilia and Parkinson’s disease. Although Defler did acknowledge the fact that it was Henrietta’s cells who helped change the future of medicine, all Defler added was that she was a black woman. Skloot was unsatisfied with this information and she wanted to know more about Henrietta Lacks, such as “Where was she from?... Did she know how important her cells were? Did she have any children?” (Skloot 4). The problem was, though, that no one cared to find out anything about the person whose cells were famous all over the world. Most people, in fact, did not even realize that her name was Henrietta Lacks, and not Helen Lane. All people knew about this woman was that her cancerous cells were referred to as HeLa cells. Thus, Skloot’s purpose was to inform people around the world about the life of the woman whose
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
Nowadays, when patients are given consent forms, every step is explicitly stated so that there is no confusion or harm. All in all, Henrietta Lacks has contributed and made significant changes to the scientific, ethical, and political aspects of society.
In 1951, the sickness of a poor African American woman named Henrietta Lacks -also know as HeLa- would go on to change the face of scientific research; without her consent. Henrietta Lacks went into John Hopkins Hospital in hopes of medical treatment, but instead her cells were unlawfully stolen from her and used for scientific advances in the world of medicine for the creations of the polio vaccine, cell cloning, vitro fertilization, and gene mapping. Long after Henrietta's death, Henrietta's family was forced to live a life of poverty without medical insurance simply because they could not afford it although their mothers cells had yielded billions of dollars due to its advances in the medical world. The scientific community and the media
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
...ave. They have been through a lot by people asking over and over about the HeLa cells. I think the least the doctors could do is tell them the actual truth about how they used those cells and stop making them guess or always wonder. I think they should have told them when they come to get the blood what they were actually using it for. They may not have understood, but the least they could do is tell them. They could have told them they wasn’t taking their blood to see if they had cancer they should have told them they were taking it for the HeLa cells. I think it was a good thing when I found out that Gey was actually doing research on the cells and not actually trying to get money. I thought this whole time he was probably getting money from it. I think when he was doing his research he was actually trying to help people, not put the Lack’s family through so much.
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.