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.…
While she was slowly dying researches were using her cells nicknamed “HeLa cells” to make several breakthroughs in medicine, including finding a vaccine for polio, cloning, and gene mapping. In Chapter 13 the widespread use of the cells were explained using this quote “The HeLa Factory…1951-1953 (set up as a massive operation to help stop polio; it would grow to produce trillions of HeLa cells each week; and it looks at the role and responsibility of African American workers at Tuskegee Institute for growing and distributing HeLa cells to fight polio). When she died the researchers also requested an autopsy to collect more of these “miracle cells”. In 1951 there were no laws governing the use of her cells without consent. To this day human tissues are still constantly collected and used for research without patient’s…
James Tanner The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Timeline 1952 First immortal cells cultured. Collected from Henrietta's cervix. Named HeLa cells.…
The Secret Life of Henrietta Lacks was a book written by Rebecca Skloot in 2010. I had never heard of this book before I started to take Medically Terminology 1 and my teacher told us that we would be reading it over the course of the semester. I was very surprised that I had never heard of it before considering I work in a library. I enjoy reading books…
In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebbeca Skoolt, who’s a journalist, was in college when she learns information about Henrietta Lacks, and African American woman, who died in 1951, from cervical cancer. Some years later, she heard about the name again and was so curious that she decided to do research on this woman. Rebecca later learns that Henrietta’s cancerous cells were the first to become the first human cell line, called HeLa. After doing some research Rebecca later learned that in the 21 century, HeLa made some of the most important discoveries. Even so, little was known about Henrietta Lacks…
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…
Even after Henrietta had died, her cells were still alive. They were transported all over the world and became known as the HeLa cells. The HeLa cells led to improvements in medicine such as vacines for polio and HPV and development of a clause that claimed that any personnel of a hospital has to have permission from the patient or the relatives of the patient to take any cells, blood, or tissue from the patient. While private labs were making millions off of Henrietta's cells, her relatives knew nothing of them for 20 years and they never received any money. Henrietta Lacks is a remarkable person whose cells have completely changed the path of science and medicine.…
Dr. Gey never told the family about the HeLa cells. Instead, Bobbette had to learn from a doctor who mentioned that he happened to work with cells with the name Lacks. What he later found out was that the cells of his lab did belong to Bobbette 's mother in law, Henrietta. In some parts of the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a comparison is shown between what the doctors were looking for and what the family was looking for. For instance, to help solve the contamination problem with HeLa, Victor McKusick said it would be possible if they got the DNA from Henrietta 's children.…
The HeLa Cells, taken from Mrs. Henrietta Lacks in the early 1950’s without her consent, have lead to researchers finding a multitude of new treatments and making a myriad of new discoveries and even mass farming and distribution cells since then. But not without great human consequence and strife. Could it be something such as religion that holds what’s left of Henrietta’s tattered family together? Ultimately,…
Dr. Gey, a doctor who grew, took care of and sold the HeLa…
Her story, the medical breakthroughs made possible by researchers using HeLa cells, and the issues raised by their use are the subject of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot”. Not many people knew about Henrietta as a person or her story, most people knew her because of HeLa and her cells. Her kids were always having people talk to them about her cells, they never asked for her story they couldn’t trust a lot of people because of it, so when Rebecca asked her Henrietta’s story they were not very open to trusting her at…
Skloot spent, “a decadelong adventure through scientific laboratories, hospitals, and mental institutions... [to try] to make sense of the history of cell culture”, and the woman behind it (6). As a result, she is able to establish credibility through her several years of dedicated research. This credibility enabled the formation of a good relationship with the Lacks family, which provided more knowledge and personal accounts to her story.…
On February 8th of 1951, the immortality of HeLa cells was discovered. Such breakthrough caused an outburst in scientific development and the release of ways to cure millions of diseases, including, but not limited to, polio, cancer, leukemia, and hemophilia. Following this further, Rebecca Skloot is able to describe the person behind the HeLa cells and the interminable process that she had to go through in order to attain enough information to write about Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cells. Skloot’s utilization of rhetorical strategies – the use of ethos, logos, and pathos – effectively engages and retains the reader in the life experience of not only Henrietta and her surroundings, but also in Skloot’s research journey on the lookout for unpublicized but highly valuable information. Skloot strived on finding and publicizing Henrietta Lacks’ life story, including those small details that not even her children had heard of before.…
Lacks was the perfect defenseless target because she simply did not understand what was occurring therefore she could not question what the doctors were doing to her. Ultimately Henrietta died from cervix cancer, however her cells that were taken from her did not die. They became known as HeLa cells and earned doctors billions of dollars without her family even aware that she was such an important person in science. After Henrietta Lacks died, doctors began to narrow in on her family to discover more about HeLa…
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.…