The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a novel written by Rebecca Skloot, a science reporter, depicting the lives of Henrietta Lacks’s family and their connection between them and Henrietta’s famous cancer cells “HeLa Cells”. Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951 and was treated with radium and radiation therapy. During her treatment process, the tumor and other cancerous tissue that was removed from her body was sent George Gey's lab at Hopkins to be grown in test tubes all without Lacks’s consent or knowledge. The cells were successfully able to divide and give the scientific community a good supply of human cancer cells to experiment on. The Lacks’s family was never informed about the cells even when there were amazing

Sasha Amos 07/27/2017 Rebecca Skloot tells a story on Loretta Pleasant also known as Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who had cervical cancer. Without her consent, her doctors took her cells and used them to create HeLa. The Lacks family had no knowledge of what Henrietta’s cells had done.

On Henrietta’s deathbed Gey tells her that her cells will make her immortal. The tuskegee institute began giving cells for polio research but soon after began sending cells to any scientist who wanted them The hela cells were used to create many scientific breakthroughs and understanding of cells such as the use of freezing cells for delivery and the standardization of cell culturing Skloot and Deborah 1990 1999 Skloot reaches out to Roland Pattillo after coming across a collection of scientific papers compiled by Pattillo about Henrietta, after she decides she wants to write about

In this book, it talks about a woman named Henrietta Lacks, and her cells were such an amazing experience for all scientists. It was such a shock of what they saw in her tests. Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1st, 1920. Henrietta died of cervical cancer on October 4th, 1959, at the age of 31. Cells taken from her body were used to form the whole cell line.

People did not know the truth about HeLa because Hopkins hospital hid the fact that they took living samples of Henrietta’s cells without consent. “-Add quote-“they did it to continue and advance in their research. From HeLa the scientific world was booming with questions. “–Add quote-“they asked questions such as where was HeLa from and who’s the patient was with the cells. Not to mention Hopkins did not release Henrietta name because they did not want people to find out who she really was.

The women name is Henrietta Lacks, a poor and uneducated women and a mother of four kids. She died, in 1951; soon after her doctor discover the cancer in her body, but her cells stayed immortal until

Henrietta and David would have three more children David “Sonny”, Deborah, Joseph. Elsie was born with what they diagnosed as idiocy but it was truly epilepsy and for that, she was put into a "negro" insane hospital. This crushed poor Henrietta and started her downward spiral that would, unfortunately, end in her untimely

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book that includes her biography, then her childhood to her tragic death; the story of her family over various decades; Skloot’s research and her relationship with the Lacks family, especially Deborah; and the story of the HeLa cells. Henrietta Lacks was known by scientists as HeLa was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951, and then became one of the most important tools in medicine. They were necessary for the development of the polio vaccine, cloning, and much more scientific developments. A doctor at Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without her consent and then sent it down to scientists who been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades. Henrietta's

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is at once a biography, a work of science journalism, and a book about the interconnected topics of ethics, justice, and racism. Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman who died from cervical cancer in 1951, was the source of the so-called HeLa cell line, which is “omnipresent” (Skloot, 2010, p. 24) in modern science. The HeLa cell line was derived from Henrietta Lacks’ cancerous tumor, which, against the wishes of Henrietta’s family was taken from her corpse and has been used for prolific and lucrative medical research for over seven decades (Skloot, 2010). Skloot (2010) described The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as “a biography of both the cells and the woman they came from—someone’s daughter, wife, and mother” (pp. 25-26). While the HeLa cells are ubiquitous in research, the woman from whom they came is, at best, a footnote in biological or medical textbooks.

In the chapter we learned that Henrietta only had a sixth-grade education, then she started birthing her children. Most of her early life she spent time on a farm and rarely went to the doctor. After Dr. Howard Jones tested Henrietta he found a “tumor the

Henrietta later had 3 more children by the names of David jr., Deborah, and Joseph. On August 1st, 1951 Henrietta Lacks was experiencing a sharp knot in her abdomen so her husband decided to take her to John Hopkins hospital to figure out what was going on, little did they know that this little visit would not only change their lives but change the lives of people all around the world. After the doctors inspected her abdomen they quickly came to the conclusion that she had cervical cancer. Subsequently, the doctors conducted radiation tests and took two cervical cell samples without her knowledge.

Is it right for one's life to be manipulated for the use of scientific research or is it just a evasion on the person's privacy. Henrietta Lacks was a African American with cells that intrigued many people, she was diagnosed with cancer leaving her to be cared for at her local hospital, where she would later die due to the extremity of the illness. While at the hospital she was unaware that the doctors there were experimenting on her taking cell samples from her body, to help find a resolution to multiple diseases. The people who examined Henrietta manipulated her and the rest of her family to gain information on her cellular structure to be ahead of others looking to achieve the same objective. Henrietta Lacks cells should have never been evaluated because it's an evasion of her freedom, a danger to her personal health, and cause conflicts.

In nature, success is measured by fitness-- or the ability to pass on one’s genes to the next generation. Passing on genes to the next generation ensures a type of immortality; humans do not live forever, therefore, their genes continue on for centuries through their lineage. Henrietta Lacks, however, was the first person to become immortal outside of reproduction-- through cells. As discussed in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Henrietta was an African-American woman whose cancerous cells were extracted to create the first immortal cell line, more commonly referred to as HeLa cells. HeLa cells would become an asset in medicine and continue to exist in labs all around the world, long after Henrietta’s death (Skloot, 2010).

Bushra Pirzada Professor Swann Engh-302 October 4th 2015 Rhetorical Analysis: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot tells the story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks who has her cervical cancer. It further goes to tell the audience how Henrietta altered medicine unknowingly. Henrietta Lacks was initially diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951; however, the doctors at John Hopkins took sample tissues from her cervix without her permission. The sample tissues taken from Henrietta’s cervix were used to conduct scientific research as well as to develop vaccines in the suture.

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.