...Henrietta lack’s mother died when she was four. Henrietta married Day at the age of 14, and had five children, and lived a life of poverty. She lived in poverty in Virginia with her 5 children. Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia. Lacks died of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951, at age 31. Cells harvested from her body without her knowledge formed the HeLa cell line. Hinretta’s cells have been researched in every manner imaginable since that time. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is much more than a book about the Lacks family. It is also an atrocity that scientists disregarded the basic human rights any human should have, just for the name of science. “Scientist do not like to think of HeLa cells as and actual part of a human who had a life and emotions. So, they gave the cells the name HeLa to dehumanize them. A researcher named Robert Stevenson...
Words: 858 - Pages: 4
...Born with the name “Loretta Pleasant” in August 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia; She later changed her name to “Henrietta.” Her mother, Eliza Lacks Pleasant, who later died 4 years after giving birth to Henrietta. After her mother passed away Henrietta along with her father, Johnny Pleasant, and other siblings moved to a family home of Clover, Virginia. There in Clover where Henrietta met her husband Day, they grew up together and got married on April 10, 1941. She gave birth to five beautifully children, where she started to feel pain within her cervix after her fourth child. Henrietta Lacks was a beautiful mother and wife who loved her family, she was known to have a beautiful soul who care for everyone. Henrietta life all went downhill after she made a visit to doctors at Hopkins Hospital, where she found out that she had stage 1 cervix cancer. Mrs. Lacks made a visit to Hopkins Hospital where they ran multiple test, because she had been feeling pain within her cervix. During Mrs. Lacks visit Dr. TeLinde removed tissues from the lump inside her vagina, which her later passed...
Words: 1711 - Pages: 7
...In the non-fiction novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, Henrietta died of cervical cancer in 1951, a few months before her death samples were taken. Those samples became an important search for the cure of the cancer she had. She encounters health risks that are dangers and increased her chances of illnesses. She faces poverty, race, and a low quality education. These factors cause internal and external conflicts on a great ‘magnitude’. Henrietta Lacks was an unprivileged woman who came from a low economic status. She had inconveniences getting seen while she was ill due to the fact that she had no transportation and without a way to get seen by a doctor her health declined. Her nutrition was at a standstill. Do to...
Words: 316 - Pages: 2
...There are many reasons that Henrietta Lacks did not give informed consent. First, the form that Henrietta signed at John Hopkins gave permission for her doctors to “perform any operative procedures…that they deem necessary in the proper surgical care and treatment of _________________,” (Skloot, Immortal, pg. 31). Henrietta’s tissues were taken, but not for the purpose of treating her cancer (as it had already been diagnosed and she was about to begin radium treatments). Second, because of her racial and socio-economic status, Henrietta was vulnerable and may have felt she didn’t have much of a choice when it came to giving consent. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is about a Southern-Christian African-American woman who has developed a deadly disease, in which she later dies of. What stands out in the book the most is how Mrs. Lacks was treated because of her ethnicity and how Skloot's race played a role in some of the treatment in the book. Reading this, I thought to myself: if Henrietta would have been white in her lifetime, she would have had a better advantage in life. If Skloot would have been African-American she probably would have emphasized racism. If both of their races would have been different, the whole perspective of the book would have changed. The treatment of African-Americans back in the day was very harsh and cruel. Henrietta Lacks was one of thousands of people that suffered a gruesome disease during a time of racial injustice...
Words: 571 - Pages: 3
...The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is uniquely arranged in a complex double plot line between Henrietta Lacks’ life story and the journey of discovery that the author, Rebecca Skloot, embarked upon in search of the truth behind HeLa (the cells of Henrietta Lacks). The narrative perspective of the work differs between both plot lines: the sections from the author’s point of view are spoken in first person, while the parts pertaining to Henrietta and her family have a third-person omniscient perspective. Beginning at Ch 29: A Village of Henriettas, the two plot lines of the novel converge, bringing together Rebecca Skloot and Henrietta’s devoted daughter, Deborah, as the two passionately collaborate to uncover the emotional shocking truth behind the mystery of HeLa. Book Context: Ch. 1-10 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks reveals the true story of the woman from the 1940-50s who was behind the miracle HeLa cells; these cells were the first to permanently survive outside the human body and they are still alive today in laboratories across the globe. Furthermore, these HeLa cells...
Words: 1599 - Pages: 7
...The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta, an African-American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line. Told through the eyes of her daughter, Deborah Lacks, aided by journalist Rebecca Skloot. Deborah wanted to learn about her mother, and to understand how the unauthorized harvesting of Lacks cancerous cells in 1951 led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs, changing countless lives and the face of medicine forever. It is a story of medical arrogance and triumph, race, poverty and deep friendship between the unlikeliest people. There had been many books published about Henrietta’s cells, but nothing about Henrietta’s personality, experiences, feeling, life style etc. This caught Rebecca’s...
Words: 1020 - Pages: 5
...The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is, arguably, two different stories. It is the story of Henrietta Lacks and her family. It is also the story of Henrietta’s cancerous cells and how their impact on science changed her family forever. Henrietta Lacks explores racial and economic inequality and how they worked together to create an extremely unjust situation for the Lacks family. Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman who lived in Jim Crow era America. As such, when she fell ill, she did not have many options when it came to medical care. She went to her local doctor and was misdiagnosed. Her last option was to go to Johns Hopkins: the only hospital Lacks could afford that would treat African-American patients. It was miles away. When she finally arrived, she was sent to the “colored” ward. It was in this ward that her cells were harvested without her knowledge. This experimentation without the patient’s consent...
Words: 845 - Pages: 4
...Lloyd L. Cannedy, Ph.D. Book Review of “The Immortal Life of Henriettta Lack” Student: Abraham S Lincoln “Henrietta Lacks, a young black mother of five children, entered the colored ward of The Johns Hopkins Hospital to begin treatment for an extremely aggressive strain of cervical cancer. As she lay on the operating table, a sample of her cancerous cervical tissue was taken without her knowledge or consent and given to Dr. George Gey, the head of tissue research. Gey was conducting experiments in an attempt to create an immortal line of human cells that could be used in medical research. Those cells, he hoped, would allow scientists to unlock the mysteries of cancer, and eventually lead to a cure for the disease. Until this point, all of Gey’s attempts to grow a human cell line had ended in failure, but Henrietta’s cells were different; they never died.” (USF 2013-14 Common Reader, The immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Pg1) The cells, called HeLa, became one of the most important tools in medical research, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. Less than a year after her initial diagnosis, Henrietta’s cancer was too much for her to bare, and the cancer took over her body. Because of her poverty she was buried in an unmarked grave on her family’s land. She was only thirty-one years old. Her family never knew, at that time that a portion small piece of Henrietta was still living, and that small piece would change the course of healthcare...
Words: 2817 - Pages: 12
...Phoenix Ethical Principles Paper Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia and she died due to complications of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951.She had been receiving treatment at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. At the hospital she was treated with radium tube inserts, which is said to be the standard treatment for cervical cancer in 1951. As a matter of routine, samples of her cervix were removed without permission. Henrietta was 31 years old when she died. In this time it was customary for doctors and researchers to remove cells from a person for testing. Likewise cells were taken from Henrietta. The problem was that the cells were taken from her body without her knowledge or consent. These cells were later used to form the HeLa cell. The HeLa cell has been used many times over in medical research since they were removed from the body of Henrietta Lacks. The lack of consent in this case shined a light on the legal and ethical issues involved in medical research. On October 4, 1951 Henrietta Lacks died, but unlike others her cells did not die. Samples of her cells were removed from her body without her permission. During this time doctors frequently removed cells from patients without their permission or consent. Informed consent did not come into practice until the late 1970s due to another controversial case, the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment of 1932-1972. The cells taken from Henrietta are known as the He-La cell line...
Words: 1151 - Pages: 5
...Henrietta Lacks. A poor black women, who didn’t even know she made a giant impact on the medical world. Henrietta's cells were taken from her at the John Hopkins Hospital without her knowledge. They were grown in culture and used for many different things. “Scientists have used HeLa cells to develop the polio vaccine; they have gone into space and have been exposed to nuclear testing and to toxins” (Reference 1) The major problem with this is that it was unethical. The scientists and doctors didn’t care that they were being unethical, because they figured that Henrietta would deny them the right to do so. Another problem is that we would never know; since they never did ask her. By not asking her if they could do so, they caused for controversy to occur later on. People to this day still talk about what happened in 1951 because it was an evolutionary event....
Words: 1207 - Pages: 5
...HeLa Sravani Venkatayogi(G01056367) Henrietta Lacks is an African-American lady from Virginia. In 1951 Mrs. Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital. HeLa cells were derived from Mrs. Lacks cancerous cells. The tumor cells were unusually aggressive. They spread throughout her body, and she died at the age of 31. The doctor who treated her took the biopsy sample and sent it to Dr. Gey who was a researcher at Johns Hopkins. They cultivated the biopsy sample of Mrs. Lacks cancerous tissue in Laboratory without her knowledge. This was the first time scientists have observed cells which showed extensive growth, and they were immortal....
Words: 1787 - Pages: 8
...The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot follows the story of the famous HeLa cell line, introducing us to the woman behind these cells, the family she came from, and how her cells swept the field of science. This book tells the story of how race, poverty, and the practices used in the fields of science and medicine in the last 100 years has led to the many of the modern day innovations we have, all thanks to the HeLa cells. In 1951, a young black woman admitted herself into Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to have doctors look at what she described as a knot on her womb. It turned out Henrietta had an aggressive case of cervical cancer, and almost 9 months after first visiting Hopkins, she died at the age of 31. Before she died, the doctors treating her had taken samples of her tumor and sent them to a man named George Gey who also worked in Hopkins, but was working to create the first “immortal” line of human cells in hopes of helping cancer research. Gey’s lab worked to grow and sustain cells in culture, using cervical cancer tissue samples from numerous women admitted into Hopkins. Although these women’s tissues were being used, it’s very likely that most, if not all, had no idea their tissues and cells were being used. This was the case with Henrietta’s tissue samples. Labeled “HeLa” for the abbreviation of her name, Henrietta’s cells became the first human cells to grow successfully in culture, and soon became...
Words: 1076 - Pages: 5
...Henrietta and the Lacks family Henrietta Lacks an Afro-American woman born August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia and later migrated to Dundalk (formerly Turner Station), Maryland. Henrietta married to her cousin David “Day” Lacks, they had five children; Lawrence, Elsie, David, Joseph (aka Zakariyyan Bari Abdul Rahman), and Deborah. In February 1951, Henrietta listened to Howard Jones, a gynecologist at John Hopkin Hospital, diagnosed her with Epidermoid Carcinoma of the Cervix Stage 1. Then eight months later, Henrietta enters into her final rest on October 4, 1951. What made her demise different from other related death, is that her cancerous cells changed medical history. Henrietta cancer cells killed her, it metastasized throughout her...
Words: 1571 - Pages: 7
...According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 43.8 million experience mental illness in a given year. Mental illness's do not only effect the person that is suffering from it but, others around them. Most mental illness's are cause by previous experiences, usually while they are children. Rebecca Skloot introduces the readers to Zakariyya and Deborah and tells us about their situations. In the book, the effects of their problems are shown as well as what caused them. In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many characters including Deborah and Zakariyya experienced stress, sadness, and anger. The physiological issues they experience are due to past experiences or that they are overwhelmed with controversy over he cells. With this knowledge,...
Words: 957 - Pages: 4
...Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman who, in 1951, underwent treatment for her cervix cancer. The doctors scraped her cervix and took two tissue samples - one healthy and one cancerous - and informed Lacks that they would be taken to a lab for processing. Little did she know, however, that the tissue samples from her body were being taken to research and not for her own benefit. Henrietta Lacks died months later due to her illness, but the cells that were harvested went on to globally revolutionize the bio-medical field, providing new insights in research on cancer, polio, gene mapping, the effects of radiation on the body, and much more, while her family never saw a dime. Was it unethical of the scientists to harvest these cells for research without Lacks’ consent, or were the millions of lives saved because of said decision worth the cost? It’s a mixed bag, in my opinion....
Words: 564 - Pages: 3
