Rebecca Skloot

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…

The Case of Belle Gibson In the following case study we see the negative effects of breaking down these barriers and not having the third party to censor the content that celebrities are publishing. Annabelle Natalie “Belle” Gibson is a 24 year old blogger who claimed to have battled cancer through alternative medicine. She fabricated stories about how she self-treated her cancer by dieting. She also invented a Smartphone Application and wrote a book about her “healthy lifestyle”. She spread…

The story of Henrietta Lacks is truly a unique story, grounded in family, hardship and scientific discovery. The story behind the “HeLa” cells and the family behind the woman who had “immortal cells” is very dramatic. Henrietta Lacks, a thirty-one year old black woman is diagnosed with cervical cancer that rapidly spreads. Stricken by poverty, Lacks family is unable to financially support her in treatment. The cancer soon overtakes Lacks body, and she dies, leaving behind her husband and five…

Rosalind Franklin began her work as soon as possible and continued working until she was truly physically unable to. In 1956, age 36, Franklin discovered that she had ovarian cancer (Biography “Rosalind Franklin”). How she came to develop this cancer is debated, whether is was due to the radiation of working with x-ray crystallography (Bagley) or possibly that it was the wicked irony of the gene being in her own DNA due to the fact that Ashkenazi Jews have a “hereditary predisposition to ovarian…

Puneet Cheema 12/5/2014 PHIL 355 Professor Stacey Elizabeth Ake Extra Credit Opportunity #1: What is the story of Jessie Gelsinger? What was its impact on the development of gene therapy? In September 1999, Jesse Gelsinger passed away. It is often remembered by many medical researchers despite not really being a household name. It happened through the gene therapy clinical trial that altered the field, similarly to the Tuskegee experiments. The research practices…

The Ethical Reflection of Henrietta Lack’s Story On October 4, 1951, a lady by the name of Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer and her cells were acquired for the purpose of research. Dr. Guy, director, and researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital went onto live television proposing to the public that he had found a means to eradicate cancer through a recent study of cancerous cells (Curtis, 2012). It was clear that medical research had begun to soar, but the balance between the exploration of…

(Privacy and Confidentiality: The interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics (PRE), 2015) The Lacks family was not aware of their siblings cells and name released in medical research all around the world. The doctor who did the autopsy later told Skloot, the author of The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks that he recalled unsuccessful attempts to contact the family. She quotes him telling her, “And, to be honest, the family wasn’t really my focus…I just thought they might make some interesting…

Skloot makes sure that none of the events shown in her book are her portrayals of each character. Their words are not interpreted or altered in any way and the voice of each character is raw and direct from the source. The characters are developed in two ways. From a third person point of view in which she describes the Lacks family’s past or by the direct dialogue between Skloot and the Lacks family. Also, the main rhetorical device to keep the rule of “show, don’t tell” is diction of the…

While we had been discussing and reading about the ethical, legal, and social implications of various different cases throughout the semester, reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks allowed me to see it from a whole new perspective. While I have learned quite a bit from all the discussion, the many assigned readings, and the overabundance of bioethics reference readings, this book truly carried my attention from cover to cover, pulling me into Henrietta’s family while sneakily telling me…

about the intricacies of malignant cells; observing the impact of HeLa cells on immune response, learning how these malignant cells grow and spread, and even researching drugs that would suppress the growth without impacting any of the healthy cells (Skloot, 57). All of this without worrying about the death of the cells; there would always be more cells that could be grown. The research enabled by these cells led to many medical advancements. The first of these was the ability to test vaccines…