Analysis: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

Her family had realized that Henrietta had suffered and died, but her cells lived on and that her cells have helped so many people. Henrietta’s son said “I just hope Hopkins and some of the other folks who benefited off of her cells will do something in honor of her and make right with the family”(Skloot, pg. 328). Henrietta is finally getting recognized, which brought unwanted attention to the family from the media, doctors, and researchers that wanted a piece of the HeLa gene line. That affected her daughter, Deborah negatively because she never really knew her mother, but when Deborah first heard of the book she was very excited that the world would finally get to know her mother’s story.

Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 of cervical cancer, leaving behind a husband, five children and some cells taken from her without her permission. These cells continue to revolutionize the scientific field today and have played an integral role in some of the most important advances in medicine: cloning, chemotherapy, gene mapping, the polio vaccine and in vitro fertilization. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks answers a lot of questions regarding the Lacks family, but also poses a number of questions regarding ethics, consent and how far society is willing to go to make medical advances.

The prologue of the book shows us the real name of the main character to clear off any doubts in the reader’s mind, “beneath the photo, a caption says her name is “Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.” … Her real name is Henrietta lacks.” (Skloot, 1). The Author introduces Henrietta and tells us the reason why she is writing about her, then she goes on to explain what a cell looks like and she compared it to the buzz on a New-York city street, (Skloot, 3), she also mentioned meeting Deborah which gives a clue that she would be of great importance in the writing of this book.

Also, I love that Henrietta changed the medical field forever. I like how Skloot tried to make me feel like I was experiencing this with Henrietta Lacks and her family. What I did not like was how Henrietta Lacks was treated by the doctors because she was a poor black tobacco farmer. However, I do not like the vocabulary that is used in this book. Also, it was wrong that Henrietta Lacks married her first cousin. Plus, Lacks had many cousins’ therefore, it is hard to keep track of all of the names and relationships. If my family experienced this, I would be furious that the doctors did not tell me or my family what was being done. Eventually I think my family would be tolerant because my cells would be helping people around the world. I think that is how Henrietta’s family felt after a couple of years after they found out about “HeLa” cells. The main person who stood out so far is Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah because she got so upset about the doctors taking her mom’s cells that she had to take medicine to calm down. I hate that Lacks had to live in a time when white people and black people were segregated. White people had nice fancy bathrooms while black had nasty bathrooms. I thought that it was a little weird that people rubbed the Jesus statue’s toe before they saw the doctor but why his toe

The “The immortal life of Henrietta lacks” is a biography of all the events that happened surround the discovery, experimentation, and aftermath of the HeLa cells. This book goes in depth not only about the cells but the lacks family. In 1951 after her daughter Deborah was born Henrietta she talk to her cousins and some friends and described the feeling of “a knot” inside of her. Months after

We have learned about cells in class. We have learned about the functions, the structures, and what the cells do for your body at school. The book shows the great heart of a woman that just learned about this woman in a biology class at the community college she was attending and decided to find more research about her. Just because she was curious about the subject. She went out of her way to help the family of a woman that had cancer. Henrietta's cells have helped millions of people around the world. Henrietta Lack's helped to widen the range of research about cells, scientific examinations, and the use of medicine. HeLa cells have changed the medical field forever. It shows you how people took advantage of people just because of the race of the person. This book shows a more in depth vision of what we have been learning in the past semester about cells. Its an example of what cells could do. The family didn't care about the money they just cared about the journalists and scientists invading their privacy. The doctors shouldn't have stolen cells from Henrietta Lacks' tumor without her or her families permission. While her disease was a tragedy for her family it was a miracle to the rest of the world. The polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, and IVF owe everything to the life , and death of a young

This is where I began to notice the way that the Lacks family decided to cope with what life had handed to them. They were not people who had been well educated, nor did they care much for the science behind the immortality of Henrietta’s cells. They had boundless unanswered questions that they knew would probably stay unanswered forever. However, they believed strongly in one thing: God chose this for their family. “The idea that God chose Henrietta as an angel who would be reborn as immortal cells made a lot more sense to them than the explanation” that science had to give (Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, is a book about an African-American woman, Henrietta Lacks, who had cervical cancer in the early 1950s. Henrietta went to John Hopkins hospital, one of the only hospitals to treatment African-Americans, they derived part of her cancer cells from her cervix and tried to keep growing her cells for research to try and discover a cure for cervical cancer. They have tried this on many patients before, but Henrietta’s cells were special and kept growing, while the other patient’s cells would die. However, Henrietta Lacks and her family had no idea about the doctors taking her cells and medical records and sending them to other doctors around the world. In Skloot’s book there are many ethical

The consideration of Henrietta Lacks as an abstraction instead of an individual becomes the source of a multitude

In my opinion, one of the most interesting concepts in the book is discussed more in the afterword than the actual narrative. The issue is brought up with the question, “Wasn’t it illegal for doctors to take Henrietta’s cells without her knowledge? Don’t doctors have to tell you when they use your cells in research?” (p361). This is an incredibly important question not only because it seems so unfair to Henrietta and her family that they used the cells without any permission, but also because anyone could end up in a similar situation to the Lack’s family. The answer to that question is no, what they did was not illegal in 1951 and it was not illegal in 2009 when this book was published. This concept really stood out to me because it brought up the concept of ownership. Do we own our bodies? Do we own our

A conflict between “scientific progress” and individual ownership the body, “whether you own or have the right to control your tissues” is an abstract debate key to Henrietta’s history (Skloot 316-317). These intangible ethical issues that Skloot discusses are interrelated with the story of HeLa- racism, exploitation, and the moral as well as legal dilemmas of tissue ownership. While HeLa cells themselves may be tangible, aspects of their story are clearly abstract. Rebecca Skloot explores both concrete and conceptual aspects by telling the narratives of both the “‘birth of HeLa, and the death of Mrs. Lacks,’” (Skloot 224). These stories illuminate each other; the reader sees both scientific and the social subjects in a new perspective as components of a single narrative. An alternate title for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks could be HeLa and Henrietta’s Eternal Legacy, as this illustrates the integral juxtaposition of the story- the narrative of science and discovery that surround the physical cells Henrietta left behind, as well as tale of the social and ethical conflicts that comprise Mrs. Lacks’s

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot digs deep into the hidden details behind the life of an African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, who faced a long rode of unethical medical treatment after being diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of 30. Before Skloot could uncover Henrietta’s past, she first had to gain the trust of the remaining family members and people who knew Henrietta due to them being poorly portrayed by workers in the medical field and the press multiple times. Skloot was not going to get the family to open up without them fully trusting her and her intentions. The book reflects on Henrietta’s childhood leading all the way up to her death. It also reflects on the unethical practices that were being held

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot tells the story of how the world famous HeLa cell line was created and the medical, legal, and cultural issues surrounding it all. This book doesn’t just cover how scientists used these cells to create life saving vaccines and treatments, it shows us the woman behind these extraordinary cells and what she and her family have went through. The woman behind these ever prevalent cells is Henrietta Lacks. At the time she was a poor, African

Can you imagine doctors stealing your cells and using them for scientific medical experiments without you or your family’s consent, and for your cells to be sold worldwide without anyone knowing, even your family, that you are the woman whose cells became immortal and helped in fascinating scientific and medical discoveries? This is the story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks whose immortal cells are known as HeLa. The book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” written by Rebecca Skloot is a scientific biography about Henrietta’s life before and after her death and the effects it had on others. In the book she explains her journey of discovering the truth behind Hela, she talks about the Lacks family, and the events caused by the HeLa cells.

Deborah is one of Henrietta’s daughters was agitated and upset about what happened to her mother and sister. So, she decided to contact with Rebecca Skloot to get some help. At first, Deborah was planned to honor her mother by put Henrietta’s information into the internet and hope to get some donations from it and build a monument to her mother, but Mrs. Gladys didn’t agree with that. . Deborah is not happy when she mentioned that “they shots my mother’s cell into space and blew her up with nuclear bombs”? It means the scientists were cloning her mother’s cell and multiply it over and over; she was panicked and disappointed about her the peoples who did that to her mother cells because she felt like her mother was outraged. The Lacks family is upset and they want to sue every scientist who’d ever worked on HeLa’s cell because they said that those scientists are profiting cells from her mother without