Henrietta Lacks: Power, Celebrity Status And The Media

Improved Essays
After watching the video on Henrietta Lacks, I believe that power, celebrity status and the media, has had the most influence on how we view and approach the treatment of cancer today. The position of power greatly influences the treatment of cancer because all it takes is someone in a high position to take the lead on the issue and use their connections to venture out and seek the possibility of a cure. It’s always been about who you know, those who are in higher positions have options available to them that might not be available to everyone else. Celebrity status is also an effective tool when used properly because those who are fortune enough to have that “celebrity status” are often viewed as leaders, therefore any actions or statements

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In the world we live in, body image is always a self conscious issue,because nobody is perfect but everyone tries to be in some way. Editor Erin Cunningham, wrote”Our Photoshopping Disorder” to explain the false ways media influences harmful and unrealistic expectations, towards people especially women. Professor Clay Shirky, is also against media in his article,”Why I just Asked My Students To Put Away Their Laptops”, by pointing out to the people, that distractions such as media can conflict learning. Even Multi-tasking, everyone attempts, but never accomplishes it because the distractions from one task to another, in his case classwork to notifications. Imagine the impact the media has within your own health?…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Henrietta Lacks Ethical debates and dilemmas are common in healthcare today. The Henrietta Lacks story was no exception. Her cells were taken without her knowledge and used to form a HeLa cell line, which has been used extensively in medical research (Arts & Entertainment, {A & E}, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to inform others about the Henrietta Lacks story and how ethical issues are relevant to this case.…

    • 868 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Henrietta Lacks Sacrifice

    • 1361 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Henrietta Lacks has helped millions of people throughout the years and most people have no idea who this woman was or what her sacrifice did for mankind. In Zimmer (2013) and Radiolab (2010) we briefly learn about Henrietta, who is more famously known for her cancer cells. She was a poor, uneducated black woman from Baltimore who died at the age of 31 in 1951. She may have been an uneducated woman, however, she did no her own body and she knew something was wrong. She, herself was the first person to notice that she had a growth on her cervix and she needed to have it taken care of.…

    • 1361 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In class we were instructed to watch the 1997 Documentary on Henrietta Lacks, “The Way of All Flesh” that was directed by Adam Curtis and produced by Joe Duplantier. This documentary highlights the importance of Henrietta Lack’s cells in the science community and how they impacted the research that was being done on cancer cells. Henrietta Lack’s was a female African American who suffered from cervical cancer. She was one of the patients being treated by Dr. Guy and unfortunately she ended up passing away. Once Henrietta passed away, her cells were taken without any consent from her family and research was done on them to help scientists understand the nature of cancer and cancer cells to a new level.…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In Skloot’s (2010) book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author reveals the story about the life of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman who was diagnosed with a fast-growing cervical cancer at a young age. The cells retrieved from her cervical tumor became the first immortal cell that could survive in the lab and replicate continuously without dying. Without the consent of Henrietta Lacks and her family, these cells later became key components to the development of many groundbreaking inventions such as the polio vaccine and in vitro fertilization. Henrietta Lacks’ cells (HeLa) were discovered during the Jim crow era in the 1950s, where laws were created to enforce racial segregation and unequal treatments to the African American…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Medical Ethics and the Abuse of Power In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, we see how medical professionals can abuse their power when treating patients. Henrietta Lacks was an underprivileged, African American woman with cervical cancer. While visiting her doctors for treatment, cancerous cells were taken from her, harvested, and distributed to labs all over the world without her knowledge. She was treated during the 1950s when racism was at its prime, causing her to be treated at an all-black medical facility where doctors and nurses were not as keen on helping these patients as they would be if patients were white.…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Henrietta Lacks Equality

    • 1884 Words
    • 8 Pages

    As a medical professional, it is not enough to not do harm, one must also do additional work to provide benefits to the patient (Coale, 2015). According to Henrietta’s attending physician Howard Jones, “Henrietta got the same care any white patient would have; the biopsy, radium treatment and radiation were all standard” (Skloot, 2010). Despite proper beneficial treatment, Henrietta’s death is linked with having a more aggressive adenocarcinoma, diagnosed years after her death, as well as being immunosuppressed due to syphilis. Even with change in diagnosis and knowing more about the role immunosuppression has with cancer, the treatment would not have changed (Skloot, 2010). Skloot points out that although the individual doctors may not have…

    • 1884 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the excerpt the author mentions everything that Henrietta has done for science and society and how important her cells were and are. Henrietta, however, never knew this. The time period that she lived in has a major effect on how Henrietta’s life unfolds. During the 1950’s (when the cancer first appeared) segregation was still the law and the feminist movement had not taken place yet, which caused people to not see Henrietta as a person, but instead a “stereotypical” young black woman. It was common place to take samples from females patients without their consent, especially black patients partly because there was virtually no respect for black people or women in that time period.…

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Elie Wiesel is quoted saying, “We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” The story of Henrietta Lacks, or “HeLa” as she is most commonly known, is a story of how one woman changed history so much and yet she has very little recognition. The reason Henrietta Lacks is not a household name is because the mainstream media and the scientific community overall does not know the person behind the cells, they only know what her cells have done to benefit them. Elie Wiesel mentions in the first part of his quote, “We must not see any person as…

    • 1672 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Modern Times: The Way of All Flesh is a 1997 one-hour BBC documentary by Adam Curtis about Henrietta Lacks and her HeLa cells. It won the Best Science and Nature Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Around this time, this documentary gave the first major exposure of Henrietta Lacks’s story to the public. Consequently, many more articles, books, and even songs and an episode on Law & Order were made about Henrietta Lacks, her cells, and her story. To put if briefly, the documentary is about Henrietta’s cancer cells, how they were taken from her without her knowledge, and how they were so extraordinary that they have affected the medical world in many ways.…

    • 749 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” dives into the story of an African-American woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died at a young age shortly after, leaving behind 5 children, a husband, and many cousins. When Henrietta was at John Hopkins being treated for her cancer, the doctors took a sliver of her tumor and cultured it to see if they could make the cell “immortal”. This all happened back in the 50’s when colored people weren’t seen as equal citizens to white people. Because of this, doctors withheld a lot of information, and they took the sliver from her without her consent and supposedly never told her about it. (Although there was one colleague who claimed that Gey did in fact tell Henrietta about the cells,…

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, racial stereotyping against minority patients is predominant in every aspect of health care. Many of these stereotypes in Skloot’s book painted blacks as unintelligent and vulnerable and led to many doctors taking advantage of their patients. Henrietta Lacks was one of these patients and unfortunately doctors made millions off of her cancerous cervix cells without her informed consent. Her cells, named HeLa cells, helped cure the polio virus and contributed to numerous other medical findings, but her and her family received none of the money earned from HeLa cells. Unfortunately, stereotyping based on race still occurs today and it has affected the lives of others terribly just like they did to Henrietta in the 1950s.…

    • 1254 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, many situations arose due to bioethical and morality issues against the patients protection and privacy. Henrietta Lacks was a thirty-one year old, African American woman who developed cervical cancer during the 1950’s. However, samples of her normal and cancerous cells were stolen from here without consent or even knowledge. Tragically, Henrietta died shortly after many chemo treatments and the malignant cancer spread to every organ in her body. The whole while her family knew nothing of these cells that were found to be “immortal,” creating a whole slew of issues.…

    • 1717 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    One of the most fundamental trust relationships is between a patient and their doctor. Physicians have supposedly earned their trustworthy title because of their extended education and desire to help others. However, this perception is being shattered by physicians violating patients’ trust by not providing all the information needed for making a responsible decision for a person’s health and performing unimaginable procedures. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” provides multiple examples of the unethical practice of doctors. When scientists do not recognize their subjects as human beings and their relationship results in an unbalanced power dynamic, their advantageous position often leads to the unethical treatments of subjects, especially…

    • 1566 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is the story of a lower class, poor tobacco farmer, Henrietta Lacks who unknowingly has helped millions of people, after her death. Henrietta Lacks had discovered that a small “knot” in her stomach area, was actually cervical cancer, but the novel does not focus on her cancer, rather it focuses on her life, death, the issues her family faced with the medical field, and how her cells have saved the lives of millions of people. This novel is split into three individual sections, Life, Death, and Immortality, which all cover different aspects of Henrietta’s story. The first and second parts of this novel, Life and Death, are pretty similar to the novels and stories that we have read in class, especially Beloved.…

    • 1546 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays