Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is written by Rebecca Skloot. This book tells us about how an African-American woman whose cancer cells were used to create an immortal cell line for experiments called HeLa. Henrietta was a poor black tobacco farmer with only middle-school education. It also tells us the story behind the woman who revolutionized modern medicine. With the use of these cells scientists could study viruses, human genetics, drugs, environment stress and vitamins. HeLa has helped…

In "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", Rebecca Skloot provides an informational insider on the life of Henrietta Lacks- pointing out the ethical issues in Henrietta's operative. Henrietta, a woman who unknowingly had her tissue cells removed from her cervix by scientists were being used in wide-spread research. After reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", I started researching and came upon an article titled "Patient Safety: The Ethical Imperative". I began making connections that…

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…

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Ethical Book Critique Andrea Burroughs University of Alabama at Birmingham Introduction The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was written by Rebecca Skloot who is from Springfield, Illinois. She is an award winning science writer. She first became familiar with the name Henrietta Lacks and HeLa in her college biology class. She was so intrigued with the information her professor Dr. Defler provided that she immediately went home to research more…

first hand accounts that Henrietta would have wanted to help people, it is logical to assume she was also want some sort of monetary compensation for herself and her family. Because that never happened, Henrietta’s children still live in poverty. Rebecca Skloot, in her book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” put it this way when talking about Henrietta’s son, Sonny. “the last thing he remembered before falling unconscious under the anesthesia was a doctor standing over him saying his…

The best society is one in which every member is driven to lift an equal part, and no one is left with too little or too much of the weight. The books The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Never Let Me Go by Rebecca Skloot and Kazuo Ishiguro, respectively, illustrate the consequences of when this balance is broken. This arises as a result of the existence of people who give to, but do not receive from the common good. Contrary to how they function in these books, societies are most successful…

Theme of Bioethics in Ball and Wolfe’s (2017) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks For three decades, scientists had been looking for human cells that could be successfully multiplied outside the human body and much of their efforts failed until 1951, when doctors in the Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore collected a cancerous tissue sample from a colored woman, Henrietta Lacks, without her consent. Her tissue sample is significant as it allowed scientists to conduct tests on human cells…

Nazi’s views Southam saw himself as superior to his patients. Evident in his response when questioned why he hadn’t injected himself, and stated “there are relatively few skilled cancer researchers, and it seemed stupid to take even the little risk” (Skloot 100). All these studies share a common ground, in which each violated some of the most basic rights people have and would be considered illegal by today’s standards, but does that mean new experiments must be done in order to obtain the same…

The health care providers utilized the illegally obtained cells from Henrietta who was poke and prodded before and after her death. In the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” author Rebecca Skloot uncovers “She signed a form with the words of operation permit at the top of the page” a statement found in the book showing that Henrietta signed to the consent of the operation permit, but that form did not include the ability of any physician…

fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment” (Skloot, 2010, p. 29-30). This might’ve been a reason why many African American did not trust the health care system. Up until today, Henrietta Lack’s family are reluctant to seek medical Treatment. Her husband has prostate cancer and asbestos filled lungs, one of her sons has a bad heart, and her daughter has arthritis, osteoporosis, nerve deafness, anxiety, and depression (Skloot,…