Henrietta Lacks Book Report

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot starts the book off by describing How Henrietta Lacks looks. She did not know who the picture of of the lady on her wall was so she was determined to find out her story. She not only told the significance of Henrietta but her life. The author starts of not knowing anything about Henrietta which is how she starts the book. Throughout the book the reader learns about Henrietta’s life and so did the author.
The author creates an interest by starting the story with a description of the main character who doesn’t have a specific name. She tells a story about a woman who is dead and famous til this day. As you are reading the book you get more interested. “Why do they call her Helen Lane? What’s her actual name? Did she donate her cells?” Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, helped Rebecca find out the information about Mrs.
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The Minneapolis published an article about what is stood for. They made a mistake in the paper. They said that her HeLa stood for Henrietta Lakes not Lacks. Gey said that he still wanted to withhold the patient's actual name. After Lawrence dropped out of school, he got drafted. Galen and Ethel and helped take care of the kids. Ethel was abusive and Galen molested Deborah. Deborah starts going to school and getting an education. Deorah found out she had a sister that was deaf and dumb. She died in an institution. People didn’t really talk about Henrietta in Clover. The only thing that existed of her were her children and her cells.Rebecca goes to talk to Cliff, a cousin, and he shows her where Henrietta’s grave is. He shows her Henrietta’s gravestone, which he points out that is identifiable only as indentions is the ground. Rebecca finally met the Lacks family but they did not know much about what happened to Henrietta’s cells. Dr. Gey died of inoperable pancreatic cancer. In honor of Gey, his colleagues wrote an article on the HeLa

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