Henrietta Lacks is the name of an African American woman who died from an aggressive form of cervical cancer in 1951. She is described as beautiful, strong, stubborn, full of life, and incredibly loving. Henrietta was married to a man named David Lacks, whom they call Day, and she was the mother of Lawrence, Elsie, Sonny, Deborah, and Joe Lacks. After having Deborah, she noticed that she had a lump inside of her. She decided to tell a few close friends and they suggested that she could be “pregnant outside of the womb” or that maybe it was the “bad blood David sometimes brought home after nights with other women” (Skloot 14). But Henrietta insisted that it was a lump, a terribly painful one at that. They decided to drop the conversation because
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After Joe was born, she discovered bleeding, and that was the last straw before she was persuaded to finally consult a doctor. When she met with a doctor, he just chalked it up to being syphilis, however when he ran the test, it came back negative. The doctor referred her to the gynecology clinic at Johns Hopkins. Day drove Henrietta almost twenty miles to Johns Hopkins because “it was the only major hospital for miles that treated black patients” (Skloot 15). Imagine driving about three hundred and fifty-two football fields, in the 1950s, just because people did not like what your skin color was. Although this is an unmerited fact, African American’s were lucky to have Johns Hopkins because, at the time, “[t]his was the era of Jim Crow- when black people showed up at white-only hospitals, the staff was likely to send them away, even if it meant they might die in the parking lot” (Skloot 15). Even though African Americans were able to be treated at Johns Hopkins, they were still segregated in colored wards and were not treated with …show more content…
on October 4, 1951” and was buried in an unmarked grave (Skloot 86) (Blood Cancer UK 2023). After Henrietta died, scientists started testing on the children. At this point, the family didn't know about HeLa cells and the scientists lied to the family saying that they were trying to see if they had the same cancer that killed their mother, but really, they were trying to "learn more about Henrietta's cells." The family wasn’t told they had taken cells from their mother/wife, much less that a part of her was still alive until 25 years after the fact. Deborah, when she got older, was the most angered by her mother’s death and it was something that haunted her until a writer got to tell her mother’s story. That was really all Deborah wanted, was to have the world know her mother as a person and not just a lab sample. Before Rebecca Skloot came along, the author who told the Lacks’ story, Deborah couldn’t understand how so many people were profiting from her mother’s cells, yet they couldn’t even afford to go to the doctor. Since being discovered in the 1950s, experiments on HeLa cells have played a role in developing advances like the polio and COVID-19 vaccines, treatments for cancer, HIV, AIDS, and much
After Joe was born, she discovered bleeding, and that was the last straw before she was persuaded to finally consult a doctor. When she met with a doctor, he just chalked it up to being syphilis, however when he ran the test, it came back negative. The doctor referred her to the gynecology clinic at Johns Hopkins. Day drove Henrietta almost twenty miles to Johns Hopkins because “it was the only major hospital for miles that treated black patients” (Skloot 15). Imagine driving about three hundred and fifty-two football fields, in the 1950s, just because people did not like what your skin color was. Although this is an unmerited fact, African American’s were lucky to have Johns Hopkins because, at the time, “[t]his was the era of Jim Crow- when black people showed up at white-only hospitals, the staff was likely to send them away, even if it meant they might die in the parking lot” (Skloot 15). Even though African Americans were able to be treated at Johns Hopkins, they were still segregated in colored wards and were not treated with …show more content…
on October 4, 1951” and was buried in an unmarked grave (Skloot 86) (Blood Cancer UK 2023). After Henrietta died, scientists started testing on the children. At this point, the family didn't know about HeLa cells and the scientists lied to the family saying that they were trying to see if they had the same cancer that killed their mother, but really, they were trying to "learn more about Henrietta's cells." The family wasn’t told they had taken cells from their mother/wife, much less that a part of her was still alive until 25 years after the fact. Deborah, when she got older, was the most angered by her mother’s death and it was something that haunted her until a writer got to tell her mother’s story. That was really all Deborah wanted, was to have the world know her mother as a person and not just a lab sample. Before Rebecca Skloot came along, the author who told the Lacks’ story, Deborah couldn’t understand how so many people were profiting from her mother’s cells, yet they couldn’t even afford to go to the doctor. Since being discovered in the 1950s, experiments on HeLa cells have played a role in developing advances like the polio and COVID-19 vaccines, treatments for cancer, HIV, AIDS, and much