The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Ethos

Cells stolen from Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who died of cervical cancer during the first half of the twentieth century, led to dozens of groundbreaking medical discoveries. Despite this contribution, her family lives utterly destitute, her name forgotten by all but her most dedicated followers. Rebecca Skloot’s book attempts to correct this injustice, giving life to the woman many simply know as HeLa. Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks hammers the point home by using pathos to highlight the suffering of Henrietta, logos to detail the historical context in which the breaches of ethics took place, and ethos to cement her expertise over biology and cell culturing, contextualizing the great boon HeLa cells presented. Skloot utilizes every tool at her disposal to prove Henrietta’s treatment was unacceptable, with emphasis on pathos to make the pain of Henrietta and her family real. Ethos and logos serve mainly to explain the alienness of Henrietta’s experience, drawing connections to the lack of opportunities black people had during this time period. In the 1940s and 1950s, black people in America were a disenfranchised lot with little access to education or basic human necessities such as health care. When Henrietta fell ill, she resorted to the only treatment she could afford: the free clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Doctors who worked at these free hospitals considered black people little more than guinea pigs, instruments used to carry out experiments as they saw fit. As Henrietta’s condition worsened, her doctors observed the expanding tumors in her cervix with little concern for her safety. At one point, “her doctors tried injecting pure alcohol straight into her spine” (Skloot 93). Skloot repeatedly paints a picture of a woman with no other recourses who suffers from the medical curiosity of doctors. Near the end of her life, Henrietta endured unending pain “New tumors seemed to appear daily- on her lymph nodes, hip bones, labia- and she spent most days with a fever up to 105” (Skloot 93). Consequently, Skloot makes sure to evoke vivid images of a patently pathetic woman. The use of a pathos appeal appears throughout the novel, making readers have a gut-reaction to the disturbingly detailed …show more content…
Cell culturing was a groundbreaking field during Henrietta’s life. At the time, no one had successfully kept human cells alive for very long outside of the body. Skloot expertly explains the Gey process of cell culturing “The drum… turned like a cement mixer twenty four hours a day… culture medium needed to be in constant motion, like blood and fluids in the body…” (Skloot 64). Skloot’s familiarity with the topic solidifies when she explains the problems faced by scientists attempting to find the optimal culturing medium and prevent contamination. The culturing media included ghoulish concoctions of “plasma of chickens, puree of calf fetus… and blood from human umbilical cords” (Skloot 60). Culturing was such a delicate operation that seemingly inconsequential things could lead to negative results “Bacteria … could find their way into cultures from people’s unwashed hands, their breath, and dust particles floating through the air…” (Skloot 60). With these setbacks in mind, it becomes clear how great a discovery a hardy, immortal cell line like HeLa proved to be. Nonetheless, this is hardly a justification for the profiteering of Henrietta’s